r^i^l^6i^Wl^myl^^wmmwi';'::, \ 



ICOCK 




Class JSJ^^2l^52) 

Book. His 

Copyright 1^° /I/ f^ 

CfiEffilGHT DEPOSm 



REQUEST FOR INFORMATION 

We want to form a Mission Study Class on the text book "The 
Christian Crusade for World Democracy" in our church and desire the 
"Suggestions for Leaders" and other material that will be of help in or- 
ganizing and conducting it. 

Very truly yours, 



Name 

Street and Number 

City or Town State 

Church 



MISSION STUDY ENROLLMENT 



Conference District 

Name of Local Church Pastor 

Town or City State 

We formed a Mission Study Class of Members on (date) 

Under auspices of 

Address 

Leader of Class 

Second Vice-President of the Epworth League 

Address 



If the class is organized in the Epworth League please send the above 
request to the Central Office of the Epworth League, 740 Rush Street, 
Chicago, Illinois. 

If organized in The Sunday School send to The Board of Sunday 
Schools, 58 East Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois. 

If organized under other auspices send to The Joint Centenary Com- 
mittee, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York. 




"CLEAR THROUGH TO THE FINISH!" 

America is determined to see the struggle for world democracy through to 
complete success 



The Christian Crusade 



FOR 



World Democracy 



By 

S. EARL TAYLOR 

and 

HALFORD E. LUGCOGK 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






^^T. 



/^/^, 



3 



Copyright, 1918, by 
THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 



OCT -5 1918 
©Ci,,:506040 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword 7 

I. Making Democracy Safe for the World 11 

II. Christian Democracy for Latin America ..... 35 

III. China — The Open Door to Four Hundred Million 

Minds 63 

IV. The Leaven of Freedom at Work in India .... 89 
V. Flood Tide in the Destiny of Africa 113 

VI. The Christian Mastery of the Pacific 135 

VII. The Rebuilding of Europe 159 

VIII. A World Program 177 

Questions for Study and Discussion 195 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Clear Through to the Finish!" frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Promise of To-morrow 46 

Some of Our Chinese Allies in France 68 ^^ 

Students of Peking University . 68 

Village Preaching in India 94 

Islam on the March 123 

Baseball Follows the Flag 149 t 

Street Preaching in Singapore 149 



MAPS 

PAGE 

1. The World Neighborhood. 17 

2. South America 37 

3. Methodist Responsibility in South America 40 

4. Literacy Chart of South America 44 

5. Panama. 50 

6. Mexico 54 

7. China 65 

8. Christian University Centers of China 73 • 

9. Hospital Map of China 83 

10. Where the Millions are Moving Toward Christi- 

anity 100 

11. Comparative Size of Africa 117 

12. Africa , . . . 126 

13. Japan 138 

14. The Philippines 146 

15. Malaysia — The Melting Pot of Asia ......... 153 

16. After the War — What ? 167 



FOREWORD 

Two men stood in the Colosseum at Rome. 

^ ^ Think of the men who have stood here ! ' ' said one. 

^' Think of the men who ivill!" said the other. 

That is the Christian outlook in all ages. It fronts the 
dawn. Its word of command is "Eyes Front!" 

The one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of 
Methodist Missions in 1819 is not being celebrated by a his- 
tory of the past, but by a program for the future. The Cente- 
nary World Program of Methodism is an expression of the 
only answer which the Christian Church can make to a world 
at war — a vigorous and world-wide extension of the kingdom 
of God. 

Two volumes dealing with the place of Christianity in 
the world situation are published as part of the observance 
of the Centenary of Methodist Missions. 

The present volume deals with the relation of Christian 
missions to world democracy. A companion volume, 
"Christian Democracy for America/^ considers the place of 
the church in strengthening the forces of Christian de- 
mocracy in our own land. 

The books are designed for use in Mission Study 
Classes in Epworth Leagues, Young People's Societies, 
Church groups, and Sunday Schools, as well as for general 
reading. 

Acknowledgment is made to Miss Gail M. Kennedy for 
assistance in the collection of material. 



This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something 
far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation. . . . And 
we live in it. 

— H. G. Wells, in Mr. Britling Sees It Through. 

Would that men could see that we are living not only in the crisis 
of the greatest war that has ever afflicted mankind, but also in the 
Advent of Revolution, at once material, moral, and spiritual; wider, I 
believe, and deeper than any which in some thousand years has trans- 
formed civilization on earth. We are on the eve of what must prove 
to be a revaluation of our habits and thoughts. Now, in a state of 
revolution things move, change, appear, and disappear with lightning 
velocity. Things which we imagine to be trifles suddenly swell up into 
incalculable forces. Changes which in normal times could hardly be 
worked through in generations spring up completed in months or weeks. 
New things which were Utopian dreams of yesterday are truisms and 
facts to-day. A state of revolution is a social earthquake, in which 
neither things nor persons remain what they were. All are inverted. 

' — Frederic Harrison. 

All the world is in the melting pot. Old things are passing away. 
All things may become new, not as a result of magic, not because of 
chance, not because of the war, but because through the Christian 
churches there shall be sufficient leadership to take hold of these nations 
of the Near East, of all parts of Europe that may need our ministry, as 
well as the Far East, Southern Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to lead 
them out into the new and better age. 

— John B. Mott. 

Trumpeter, sound for the splendor of God I 
Sound the Music whose name is law. 
Whose service is perfect freedom still. 
The august order that rules the stars! 
Bid the anarchs of night withdraw. 
Too long the Destroyers have worked their will. 
Sound for the last, the last of the wars ! 
Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us. 
On to the City of God. 

— Alfred Noyes. 



CHAPTER I 

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE WORLD 

In the years of the great war the world has crossed a 
new International Date Line. It is impossible for anyone 
to estimate accurately the full significance of the time in 
which he lives, but there is a widespread unanimity of opin- 
ion that only one date has surpassed in importance to man- 
kind these days in which we live. That date is the shining 
peak of time which separates A. D. from B. C. In 1910 the 
world's missionary conference at Edinburgh declared, ^'The 
next ten years will in all probability constitute a turning 
point in human history." If ever a prophecy was fulfilled 
beyond the farthest dream of those who made it, it was that 
one. For while it would doubtless have proved true from 
the natural development of forces then in sight, even had 
there been no war, the convulsion which has shaken civiliza- 
tion to its foundations is effecting changes so momentous 
and has brought into action forces so powerful that no mind 
can gauge their possibilities. The future will in all proba- 
bility look back on these years, not merely as a turning point 
in history, but as determining the destiny of mankind for 
ages to come. 

A World Situation 

It is not an exaggerated use of language to say that for 
the first time in history there has developed a ivorld situa- 
tion. The phrase has often been used before, but until the 
present conflict drew the whole world into its vortex, no one 
train of events has ever bound up the destinies of all nations 
together. During the early days of the war the question 
was frequently asked, ^'What shall it be called! By what 
name shall it be known in history?'' Some, with pathetic 
optimism, proposed to call it ^'The War of 1914." For a 

11 



12 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOE DEMOCRACY 

long time we vainly imagined it might be called, ^^The 
European War." The question is asked no longer. The 
titanic explosions of the conflict have burst the bonds of 
geography: It has named itself — ' ' The World War." And 
that very name, ^'The World War," is more than a geo- 
graphical measurement. It is history. For it records one 
of the greatest results of the war so far, the discovery of the 
ivorld as a ivhole. It is prophecy as well. For the conflict 
is not only an appalling war of the world, hut a ivar for a 
tvorld, a new ivorld. The hope of mankind for that new 
order of life, is gathered up in the words in which President 
Wilson has voiced the mind and heart of the allied nations — 
^'The world must be made safe for democracy." 

There are four great aspects of the present tumultuous 
days of conflict which have brought to the Church of Christ 
the largest opportunity and the gravest challenge which it 
has ever faced. The first is the agony and loss of battle, 
which can neither be conceived nor computed, the fact that 
we are living under the shadow of the greatest world trag- 
edy in the history of mankind. The second is the utterly 
new consciousness of the world as a whole. The third is 
that the world, both as a result of the war and of forces 
which preceded it, is in the most plastic and formative state 
it has ever had. The fourth is the fact that by far the larger 
portion of the human family has set out on a crusade for 
the winning and guarding of democracy. These four aspects 
of the present world situation intermingle and overlap at 
many points, but each brings its distinct and overwhelming 
call to the Christian Church. 

A Shattered Civilization 

Whatever may be thought of the causes of the war, or 
its outcome, a world engaged in slaughter on an unpre- 
cedented scale ; a world in agony, in mourning and in ruins 
presents a searching test to Christianity. The cost of the 
conflict in suffering, in death, in destruction, outruns the 
power of the fleetest imagination to conceive. Colossal and 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 13 

malignant forces of destruction have been at work which 
make all former wars, even those of Napoleon, seem like 
sham battles. Two thirds of the human race are directly 
involved in the conflict, and every other human being indi- 
rectly. Over forty-two million of men are under arms, not- 
withstanding the losses already met with. In no previous . 
war were there more than 2,000,000 men lined up against 
each other. At the close of 1917 more than 6,000,000 had 
been killed in action ; 1,000,000 men, women, and children had 
been brutally massacred; 3,000,000 had died of starvation; 
6,000,000 were lying wounded in military hospitals and as 
many more were captives in prison. Unnumbered thou- 
sands have been sent home permanently crippled, blinded, or 
deformed. Think what these figures mean when translated 
into terms of human heartache ! The cost in money, the 
large burden of which future generations must bear, runs 
into billions in a way that simply numbs our senses and con- 
veys little meaning. At the beginning of 1918 the daily cost 
was over $130,000,000. Three and a half years of war 
brought an increase of $111,700,000,000 in the public debt of 
the twelve leading war nations. During the first and cheap- 
est year of the war the cost was greater than all the national 
debts in the world combined. To this must be added things 
which cannot be hinted at in figures at all, the burdens of 
future years, the legacies of hatred, and the setting-back of 
many forces of social progress. What message do these 
things spell out to the disciples of the Prince of Peace f 

Has Christianity Failed? 

It was but natural that many should jump to the conclu- 
sion that Christianity had failed. That after nineteen cen- 
turies of Christian influence, the so-called Christian nations 
should be involved in so terrible a carnage was for many a 
self-sufficient proof of the failure of Christianity. And, in- 
deed, let it be confessed freely, no section of the Christian 
world is entitled with easy complacency to shove the entire 
guilt on any other section. There is in the crisis an element 



14 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

of judgment, which must bow all Christendom in humility 
and contrition. 

The sober thought of men, however, has come to see that 
it is a travesty to call the forces which have launched the war 
Christianity. It is the distortions of and substitutions for 
Christianity which have failed to insure a peaceful and se- 
cure world order — the crass materialistic philosophy of life, 
a rampant and aggressive autocracy with an immoral theory 
of the state as above law, a pagan trust in power and the ele- 
vation of power as the supreme good with the denial of the 
claims of human brotherhood. When these forces run their 
course and produce a world holocaust, is it the gospel of the 
Son of Man which has failed! There is profound truth as 
well as brilliance in Mr. Chesterton's word: ^^Christianity 
has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found 
difficult and not tried.'' Everything else has been tried. 
Commerce has been vaunted for a generation as the saviour 
of the world's peace. A writer^ in 1907, in a book called The 
New Internationalism, stated that ^'the dollar sign is rap- 
idly supplanting the cross as a factor in international 
peace." That was the kind of thing multitudes of people 
were commencing to believe. We have been witnessing for 
four years the kind of ''new internationalism" the dollar 
mark creates, in Belgium and France, Poland and Armenia. 
Scientific progress, diplomacy, military power and Western 
civilization have all been exploited as the guarantee of the 
world's peace and plenty — and they have all gone up in 
smoke. One thing has to-day found a shining place in the 
sun and that is the everlasting truth that there is none other 
name given in heaven or earth whereby men must be saved 
but Jesus Christ. In clear, shining sunlight such as it has 
never been seen before during nineteen hundred years, is 
the truth that nothing can save individuals, homes, commu- 
nities and the world except Christ — Christ a living reality in 
the whole life of the people throughout the world. ^'The 



Harold Bolce. 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 15 

world's supreme need demands the release of the world's 
supreme power for righteousness." 

The Only Hope of Peace 

Men may devise ^^ Leagues to Enforce Peace" of a hun- 
dred different varieties, and should devise them. But at the 
heart of it peace means brotherhood, and to say that broth- 
erhood has become the superlative necessity of the world is 
to say that Christ is the sole hope of the world because none 
other has been found to be a dynamic of brotherhood among 
mankind. 

The Church of Christ has not come to an hour of apol- 
ogy. Above the crash of the guns and through them has 
sounded the call for aggression, to let loose in force and di- 
mensions as never before the only true peace-making power 
on earth, the gospel of Christ. The United States is com- 
mitted, in the words of her President, to a war to end war. 
^'We shall fight," he says, *^for a universal dominion of 
right, by such a consent of free peoples as shall bring peace 
and safety to all nations and shall make the world itself at 
last free." Such a program involves nothing less than the 
evangelization of the world. Only religion can kill war, for 
religion alone creates the new heart. In the words of Dr. 
Fosdick, already become classic, ^^the missionary enterprise 
is the Christian campaign for international good will. We 
must see that it is so and handle it as though it were so. 
What the nations through their governments will slowly 
learn to do, loath to leave old precedents, bound by the sec- 
tarian narrowness of national loyalties. Christians must do 
now, and do with a lavish generosity that they have not prac- 
ticed hitherto. " ^ 

The Discoveky of the Wokld 

The earthquake which has shaken the world down has 
shaken it together. It may seem like a paradox to say that 

^ H. E. Fosdick, The Challenge of the Present Crisis. 



16 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

out of the bitterest strife of the ages has emerged the dis- 
covery that the world is one, but it is the truth. That dis- 
covery places upon the Christian Church an inescapable 
responsibility to shape and accomplish a program for the 
evangelization and emancipation of that united world. 

Millions of men have had in these last few years the 
experience of Keats : 

"Then felt I like some watcher in the skies 
When a new planet swings into his ken." 

The new planet is our old world, but it has swung into 
the consciousness of men as a whole as never before. 

It has long been a commonplace that steam and elec- 
tricity have made the world a neighborhood, but the war has 
seized the old commonplace and made it bewilderingly vivid. 
The figure of a neighborhood is too spacious. The war is 
not so much a neighborhood quarrel as a fire in a tenement 
house where men are crowded together for life or death. A 
family in a tenement house has a highly substantial interest 
in the question whether the children across the hall play with 
matches. You cannot very well quarantine a fire in a tene- 
ment house. Nor can a war in this compacted and crowded 
home of the human family be quarantined. The flames of 
war which started in northern Europe soon spread down the 
corridors till two thirds of the race were involved in it. 

Terrible as has been the occasion which has brought the 
world together, there is a profound spiritual significance in 
such vast portions of the world uniting in eif ort and thought. 
It raises the curtain on a new era. On that frontier of free- 
dom which stretches from the English Channel clear down 
into Africa and Mesopotamia over twenty-five nations on 
the Allied side have answered ''Here" to the great roll 
call of democracy. If ''politics makes strange bed-fellows," 
the war has made still stranger trench-fellows. The Gurkha 
from India and the Arab, the Algerian, and Hottentot from 
Central Africa have spilled their blood along with the New 
Zealander, the Canadian and the Belgian in the cause of 



18 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOE DEMOCRACY 

freedom. The American airman fights with a British gun 
from a French machine. The Fiji Islander has gone over 
the top with his French and American brothers. The Sikh 
from India rightly wears the Victoria Cross for high valor 
along with his English comrade in arms. Each in his own 
tongue repeats that glorious watchword of France — ^ ^ They 
shall not pass.'' 

Hunger, one of the strongest bonds that tie men to- 
gether, is playing its part too, as well as danger and hope, 
in bringing this new world-consciousness to the forefront. 
We cannot be parochial in our food. Hunger is teaching the 
world in a stern and memorable way the old truth that Grod 
Almighty has made all men of one blood to live together 
and to eat together. The war has given a mighty emphasis to 
President Wilson's words: "The world no longer consists 
of neighborhoods. The whole is linked together in a com- 
mon life and interest such as humanity never saw before 
and the starting of wars can never again be a private and 
individual matter for nations." 

The thundering call to the Christian Church is plain — 
if the luorld is one whole and a scourge in it cannot he quar- 
antined, the cure for that scourge must not he. No part of 
the world is safe till all is safe. Democracy cannot be safe 
anywhere until it is safe everywhere. Ignorance and dark- 
ness and vice and degradation can no more be quarantined 
than war. We cannot save the world by homeopathic por- 
tions of the gospel, here a little and there a little. A united 
world demands of a world church, a world-program. 

A New Woeld at Birth 

The plastic condition of a world in ferment, in the melt- 
ing pot of revolution and change, presents a providential but 
fleeting opportunity to the church to furnish a Christian 
foundation for the new structure. The world has never 
stood still, and ever since the days of Pentecost there has 
been abundant opportunity for Christian influence. But 
never have there been at one time such revolutionary forces 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 19 

of different character at work throughout the whole world. 
What the character of the new structure will be no one can 
prophesy ; but that it will be new no one can doubt. 

"The rudiments of Empire here 
Are plastic yet and warm. 
The chaos of a mighty world 
Is rounding into form." 

^^When God rubs out/' said Bousset, ^4t is because he is be- 
ginning to write. ' ' If there ever was a time in the history of 
the Christian Church when the establishment of the world- 
wide kingdom of God should be the dominating thought and 
purpose of the united body of Christ, that hour has just 
dawned upon us in these tragic, pregnant days. Every- 
where we look, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, men 
and nations are in upheaval and we see conditions which 
demand the concentration of the unifying and guiding forces 
of Christendom. If the church as a great missionary force 
does not rise to a great occasion now, it will not be because 
she can ever hope to get a bigger or a better one. 

Not all the changes of these days are on the credit side 
of the ledger. Many are terrible liabilities which will be a 
peril and obstacle to the Kingdom for years to come. But 
the very threatening of those new evils is itself an urgent 
call to Christian campaigning. 

Nor are all the revolutionary changes, particularly in 
the Far East and Africa and South America, the result of 
the war. They have been increasing in momentum for a 
decade and more. But they have been vastly accelerated 
and increased by the war. The revolution in Eussia, with 
all that it means for good and ill, moved forward by a leap 
of a generation at least, under the forcing process of the 
upheaval. 

The New Day iit America and England 

In England and America, what tokens of a new world 
are already before our eyes ! The passage by Congress of 



20 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

the prohibition amendment, called by Bishop Bashford ''the 
greatest piece of constructive legislation in American his- 
tory since the amendment prohibiting slavery;" the rapid 
extension of woman suffrage in America and the admission 
of six million women to suffrage in Great Britain; the new 
status of women industrially in both countries ; the progress 
of collective effort; the wide extension of government con- 
trol of industry; the progress of industrial democracy in the 
greater participation of labor in the profits and direction of 
industry ; the undreamt of revelation of resources in patriot- 
ism, generosity, and humanity — all these are indisputable 
signs of a new day. 

In Non-Cheistian Lands 

And if, as Kipling expresses it, taking ''hold of the 
wings of the morning," we "flop around the earth," what do 
we see? Not only a new Europe, but also a new Asia, and in 
many respects a New Africa will emerge from the war. In 
India a new national consciousness is awake and large polit- 
ical changes are imminent ; China is searching for the ideas 
and the men that are to shape its future destiny ; Japan has 
gained a new position as a world-power and is experiencing 
within its own life great industrial changes. In the near 
and middle East the collapse of Islam's political power is 
bringing far-reaching changes in political and economic life 
of the peoples ; the Jews have won a new freedom and have 
been deeply stirred by the hope of regaining after two thou- 
sand years an independent national existence in their 
ancient home ; conservatism and prejudice are being broken 
down through new and wide contacts ; non-Christian nations 
are in a serious mood, of which dissatisfaction with the tra • 
ditional faiths of Asia and Africa is a convincing evidence. 
The masses of plain people practically everywhere are mov- 
ing toward Christ in larger numbers and with greater mo- 
mentum at this present time than at any time within the last 
fifty years. We are learning from the mass movement in 
India and the revivals in Korea that there is such a thing as 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 21 

the Cliristianizing of families, villages, and tribes. ^^ There 
is such a thing as the conversion of national aspirations and 
ideals. There is a sudden turning of the vast streams of hu- 
man history. It was seen in the days of Constantine, again 
in the days of Luther ; again under Napoleon. That stream 
is turning massively, irresistibly to-day. " ^ 

Now OE Nevek 

This vast shifting to new foundations is more than op- 
portunity which Christianity can take or reject at its will. 
It is menace. The cause of Christ hangs in the balance. For 
the church, as far as we are concerned, it is now or never. 
If once this period of upheaval passes, and the new world 
which is now in the making, builds itself upon foundations 
which are as hostile or indifferent to Christ as were the 
foundations of the age which has gone down in ruins, the 
future of the church in this and the next generation will be 
an unutterable darkness. Christianity has now her chance, 
the great chance of all her long existence. She holds the key 
to humanity's unsolved problems. She is the steward of 
that which the world supremely needs. This is no time for 
a Christian leadership whose only military command is, ^^ As 
you were ! ' ' The world will never be as it was. The church 
cannot afford to be as it was. It must respond in an ade- 
quate way to this God-given day. 

The War for Democracy 

The heart of the urgent call to us in the United States 
for world-wide Christian advance lies in the fact that we are 
engaged in a war for democracy; not merely for our own 
defense, but to make the world safe for democracy. To that 
sacred task we have dedicated our hearts, our money, our 
lives. Underlying all the thinking and acting of individuals 
and the nation must be the winning of the war. 

But thoughtful men have come in increasing numbers to 



W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, p. 64. 



22 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

see that we have set our faces as a nation to a task which no 
military victory, howeA^er complete, can accomplish. The 
victory of arms which we pray and believe that God will 
bring to the allied nations, will remove the hindrance to a 
world free for democracy which lies in an aggressive autoc- 
racy bent on conquest. But with that hindrance removed, 
no mass of armies can bring into being the inner mental and 
moral and spiritual forces which must be created if safe 
democracies are to exist and flourish on the earth. No 
merely military victory can protect the two thirds of the 
world which lies distant from the battlefields from its in- 
ternal weakness and disorder. No military victory can 
foster the intelligence and moral character which are the 
foundations of democracy. Only the emancipating, educat- 
ing, and stabilizing forces of the Christian religion can do 
that. The task of the hour is one task. In it the two great 
passions of the human heart join and fuse — patriotism and 
religion. 

On the patriotic side it is to rid the world of the menace 
of the rampant despotism of Germany and her allies ; to free 
democracy from the material obstacle of aggressive autoc- 
racy. 

On the religious side it may best be stated by the re- 
versal of President Wilson's words, to malve democracy safe 
for the ivorld; to set at work those forces of education, moral 
control and religion among the backward peoples of the 
world without which democracy is ^^a destruction walking at 
noonday. ' ' 

The Patriotic Task 

Never must it drop from the mind that the cause of 
Christ has an overwhelming stake in the winning of the 
war. Some of the fairest hopes of the kingdom of God are 
bound up in it. The true freedom of the world cannot exist 
under the rule of materialistic power. The kingdom of God 
cannot tolerate a world where nations live by swagger and 
threat, where the ambition and philosophy of a few make 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 23 

miserable all mankind. We fight ^'to vindicate the prin- 
ciples of peace and justice in the life of the world as against 
selfish and autocratic power . . . for the ultimate peace of 
the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German 
people included : for the rights of nations great and small 
and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of 
life and of obedience.'' ^ ^^We are fighting Germany because 
in this war feudalism is making its last stand against oncom- 
ing democracy. We see it now. It is a war against an old 
spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feu- 
dalism — ^the right of the castle on the hill to rule the vil- 
lage beneath. ' ' ^ 

Sadly as Christian men draw the sword, we need be, in 
no confusion. We find in the New Testament no surrender 
of the chief aim of all, the commonwealth of humanity ; no 
substitution of lesser loyalties for justice, truth, and right. 
We find, rather, as its climax a call to arms. There is to be 
battle, but without hatred to human foe. There is to be par- 
ticipation in the age-long, bitter struggle against an unseen 
foe that makes his stronghold in the minds of men, inciting 
them to war and conquest and the lust of selfish power. To 
such times as ours comes the message of Ephesians: ^^Fi- 
nally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power 
of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may 
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we 
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principal- 
ities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye 
may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done 
all, to stand." 

The nation has embarked on a great, unselfish, spiritual 
crusade to clear the pathway for God and it follows its sons 
across the sea with prayer. 



^ President Wilson, April 2, 1917. 

"" Franklin K. Lane, "Why We Are At War.' 



24 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Where are you going, Great-Heart ? 
"To cleanse the earth of noisome things, 
To draw from life its poison-stings. 
To give free play to Freedom's wings." 
Then God go with you, Great-Heart 1 

Where are you going, Great-Heart ? 
"To lift To-day above the Past; 
To make To-morrow sure and fast; 
To nail God's colors to the mast." 
Then God go with you, Great-Heart I^ 

The Missionaky Task 

To complete the task of the soldier demands an ade- 
quate and aggressive program for the world-wide extension 
of the kingdom of God. 

Two slogans of the third Liberty Loan campaign, when 
deeply studied, make this clear. One was ' ' Halt the Hun. ' ' 
The other was ^'To make the world a decent place to live 
in. ' ' The second is the larger and longer task, and without 
its accomplishment success in the first will be largely fruit- 
less. The Allied armies, please Grod, will ^'Halt the Hun.'' 
But nothing can make the world ^^a decent place to live in'' 
except the fundamental qualities of the spirit of Christ. 

The war is essentially a war for opportunity. The over- 
throw of tyranny means that the nations will be safe from 
outside interference. But only the extension of vital Chris- 
tianity throughout the world will ever mean that moral and 
spiritual forces will be unchained which will create the pos- 
sibility of world safety, save nations from internal sin, weak- 
ness, and disorder, and undergird them with purity and the 
spirit of justice and brotherhood. 

We are in this war in behalf of the democracy of the 
world. The greatest needs throughout this bleeding planet 
are, after all, those which touch the ideals and future of 
humanity. It is the function of the religion, the ethics, the 



' From "The Vision Splendid," by John Oxenham. George H. Doran 
Company, Publishers. 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 25 

power, the love that was brought by the Son of God to make 
the world safe for anything worth while. Jesus Christ alone 
can save the world. Guns cannot. They leave but a desert 
waste. The upbuilding of the world begins when war has 
spit its last bomb and thrust its last bayonet. Governments 
and armies never attempted to accomplish these results ab- 
solutely fundamental to the safety of democracy. There is 
but one institution in the world that has a program, the pur- 
pose of which is to bring about these tremendous structural 
changes ; that institution is the Church of Jesus Christ. 

Democeacy Not Safe for the World To-day 

The boon which more than half the world ^s a-seeking — 
democracy — is not safe to-day. And after the war two 
thirds of the human race in Asia, Africa, half of America, 
and more than half of Europe will be as little prepared to 
safeguard democracy as they are to-day. 

Look at this proposition a little more closely. What is 
necessary for the safety of democracy? What, after all, is 
a true democracy? It is more than a republican form of 
government with the machinery of popular vote. Under 
republican forms of government, Mexico for years was a 
despotism ruled with a hand of iron. Still under a repub- 
lican form it was more closely anarchy for four recent years 
than anything else. England, under the form of a mon- 
archy, has had one of the freest democracies on earth. A 
true democracy is more than any form. It is a moral and 
spiritual order whose aim is the freedom, happiness, and 
welfare of the individual. James Eussell Lowell has defined 
democracy in plain words as that order in which every man 
has a chance and knows that he has a chance. 

Three great classic statements of the essence of democ- 
racy have been made. One i^ the watchword of the French 
Revolution — '^Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. ' ' The sec- 
ond is in the words of the Declaration of Independence — 
^^The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
The third is in the immortal words of Lincoln — ^^A govern- 



26 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

ment of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' At 
heart democracy is a faith, a faith in a common humanity, 
a belief that men are essentially the same kind of stuff and 
that only by the cooperation of all, by the recognition of all 
as the common partners, with equal dignity of membership, 
can any progress worth the fighting for be obtained. 

What Demockacy Rests On 

The foregoing description of democracy is not a quota- 
tion from the New Testament, but it comes from it neverthe- 
less. It needs no long argument to convince that this order 
of life can never be realized till it rests on the foundation of 
the world 's first and greatest democrat — Jesus Christ. 

Ask yourself what it is that has made democracy safe 
in America. And when we speak of our own land, we speak 
not as though we had attained but as though we press on to 
the mark of our high calling. The more ardent our patriot- 
ism the more ready we are to see and confess our imperfec- 
tions of democracy, and the more ready to strive to correct 
them. The call of the present day is strong on America to 
free herself from all undemocratic blights — its race prej- 
udices, class distinctions, economic injustices. Neverthe- 
less, our heritage of freedom is large ; and it is easy to see 
the forces which have made it so. 

The Church 

The gospel of Christ and the church which proclaims it 
are the undergirding of freedom in America. Other founda- 
tion for democracy can no man lay than that which is laid 
in Christ. It came from him. That was a fine and uncon- 
ventional tribute to Christ paid by Decker, ^'The first true 
gentlemen that ever breathed.'" He was also, as Lowell 
points out, the first true democrat who ever lived. The 
world knew nothing of the rights of the common man till 
Christ brought to earth the revelation of the infinite value of 
every soul. The democracies of Greece and Rome were for 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 27 

the few, resting on slavery for the many, and soon perished. 
No one before ever voiced the value and unspoken hopes of 
common humanity. 

"He was the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea." 

The Bible has been woven into the very texture of 
American life. ^ ' The existing government of this country, ' ' 
said William H. Seward, ''could never have had existence 
but for the Bible. ' ' The moral foundations of national char- 
acter, without which no free state can stand, have sprung 
from Christian ideals and been sustained by them. 

The Home 

The home has played an incalculable part in the build- 
ing and safe-guarding of free institutions, in America and 
everywhere it has flourished. It is the training school of 
reverence, of sympathy, of obedience, and self-control, with- 
out which on a widespread scale a republic is a mockery. 
The home as we know it, with its reverence for womanhood, 
its solicitude for childhood, its ideals, has never appeared 
apart from Christianity. ''The Cotter's Saturday Night,'' 
by Robert Burns, is more than a beautiful picture of a Chris- 
tian home in the Scotch Highlands. It is a profound piece 
of political philosophy : 

"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs 
That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad." 

The School 

It is an axiom that where the people rule they must be 
fitted to rule. Education or chaos is the only alternative in 
a democracy. The demagogue or tyrant will rule the peo- 
ple who are not educated. Shipwreck is as sure as when 
a blind pilot undertakes to steer a ship through the rocks. 
Let the anarchy in Mexico and the collapse in Russia enforce 
the truth. 



28 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Public Opinion 

Public opinion is king in a true democracy. With no 
widespread devotion to ideals on the part of the multitude, 
no capacity for moral indignation with which the govern- 
ment must reckon, freedom is not sustained. ' ' Eternal vigi- 
lance is the price of liberty. ' ' 

The Need of the World to Be Fitted for Democracy 

How fares the world in respect to these essentials of 
true democracy? Over one half of the population of the 
globe can neither read nor write. By far the largest por- 
tion of that percentage is found in the non-Christian lands. 
Ninety-four per cent of the population of India are illiter- 
ate as against 7.3 per cent in the United States. In China 
the percentage of illiterates is even larger. What is the out- 
look for true democracy there? What can it be but black 
without speedy aid in education? In Latin America the 
illiteracy ranges from 40 to 80 per c5nt; in Moslem lands, 
with the exception of Turkey, from 75 to 90 per cent. "In 
pagan Africa, apart from mission stations, the people do not 
even know that writing has ever been invented!" 

Nearly a billion people have never heard of Christ — 
almost two thirds of the population of the globe. That 
means they stand entirely apart from the whole range of 
influences associated with Christianity, the sense of the 
value of personality and human rights which work so 
mightily as incentives to progress. 

A safe democracy will come in these belated nations 
when Christ comes. It will come with the Great Democrat, 
not before. Up to the present time republican iyistitutions 
have never 'flourished in any land where a free church has 
not preceded it to set up standards of Christian living and 
to lay the foundations in Christian ethics and character. 

The democracy without sure foundations is a menace 
to the rest of the world. The democracies of Russia, and 
China, and Mexico are illustrations of the fact that the 



MAKING DEMOCEACY SAFE 29 

world's safety may be disturbed at any time by internal 
quarrels in countries where 90 per cent of the population 
are illiterate. 

Has the Chuech a Pkogram"? 

Has the church a program to meet this world-circling 
and world-lifting task? No other institution on earth 
has. The Church of God has both the program and the 
credentials for the task. All that it needs is to be baptized 
into a new sense of the urgency and immensity of the 
task. It is a heart-breaking task, but it began in a heart- 
break on Calvary, a divine heartbreak over the need and sin 
of the world. 

The Christian program is the same as it has ever been 
since Christ sent out that first group of disciples into Gali- 
lee, preaching, teaching, and healing. It is lifting the 
world's life by those three levers. It preaches the gospel of 
the love of God, the redemptive power of God, and the king- 
dom of God as an order of righteousness, brotherhood, and 
service. In every environment that message has proved a 
germinating force of righteousness and social progress. In 
its schools of every kind which belt the earth — primary, 
secondary, and colleges, industrial and medical schools — ^it 
has plowed up the earth for the growth of self-realization 
and self-government. In its hospitals and social healing of 
every kind it has set moving forces of vast social trans- 
formation. 

It has the credentials. The missionary of the gospel 
has been the carrier of the democratic ideal to the four 
corners of the earth. It was through the missionary and 
those who came in his train that those vague forces which 
we together call Western civilization were created. 

The mainspring of human progress has been for nine- 
teen hundred years, and is to-day, the Christian faith. 
* ' The moral dynamic that transformed our wild forefathers, 
the Saxons, Celts, and Scandinavian, into civilized nations 
was not science, then unborn; not politics, literature or art; 



30 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

it was Christianity.^' ^ And tlie power that has in the last 
one hundred years aroused Asia and Africa and the islands 
of the Pacific from the sleep of centuries is not commercial 
or governmental but Christian. The credentials of the gos- 
pel of Christ for a world-task are well urged in the words 
of President Wilson : ''The gospel of Christ is the only force 
in the world that I have ever heard of that does actively 
transform the life ; and the proof of the transformation is to 
be found all over the world, and is multiplied and repeated 
as Christianity gains fresh territory in the heathen world. ' ' 

The Centenaey Pkogeam of Methodism 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has planned to cele- 
brate the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of 
Methodist missions by the only kind of a celebration that 
would fit this day. It has girded itself to face adequately 
its share of this world task. In a careful and thorough way 
it has surveyed its world field and estimated what it needs 
for a five-year term to attempt in a fair measure the 
Christianization of the one hundred and fifty millions in the 
non-Christian world for which it is solely responsible. It is 
a program of large dimensions, for a small program in this 
day would be none at all. It is the most far-reaching, the 
most daring perhaps, ever undertaken by any church. It 
involves a consecration of life, of prayer, and of money 
which is ^revolutionary. But the church cannot stay as 
a leader in a revolutionary world without becoming revolu- 
tionary too. The program calls for a church on its knees, 
and an offering of hundreds of its best sons and daughters 
for world-service and forty millions of dollars. 

It is a crusade that is God-timed. Timed, it is true, in 
days of burden and stress, but timed to a day when men are 
thinking in larger terms and there is a moral sacrificial 
temi^er in the hearts of men and a larger horizon to their 
minds than ever before. 



W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions. 



MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 31 

To accomplish this program means nothing less than to 
recover for the church the horizon of Christ. If this is not 
done, the church must sound a retreat at a time when the 
world outside the church is moving into a new age and 
drop back into a place of secondary importance in all that 
pertains to constructive spiritual leadership. We must '*go 
on or go under. ' ' 

It can be done. The spirit of the church must be mobil- 
ized. The Christian spirit of adventure and of faith must 
be stimulated. We are come to the Kingdom for such a time 
as this. Spirit is the one really creative force in the world. 
Change the spirit of the church, and all else will follow, as 
the fruition of an intense life. 

We must give the Christian emphasis to words that in 
these days have burned themselves into the memory of every 
American. ^^A supreme movement of history has come." 
Our great and loved church, born with a world-parish as the 
destiny of her message and experience, has squared herself 
to make her world-task her supreme business. ''God help- 
ing her, she can do no other. We must all speak, act and 
serve together. ' ' 



I honestly believe that no place in all this world needs the gospel 
as South America. — Bohert E. Speer. 

Both the intellectual life and the ethical standards of these coun- 
tries seem to be entirely divorced from religion. The absence of a reli- 
gious foundation for thought and conduct is a grave misfortune for 
South America. — Lord Bryce. 

We are told that some day we shall have war with Mexico. How 
much our own fault it will be if such a lamentable conflict comes ! What 
Mexico needs is an invasion of schoolteachers and social workers and 
Christian preachers, who have caught the idea of missions in their 
international relationships; and if such an invasion is not forthcoming, 
a military invasion may indeed be necessary. — Harry E. Fosdich. 

Latin America had a population of 15,000,000 a century ago ; to-day 
it has about 80,000,000. Formerly immigration was restricted to the 
Latin race. With transportation facilities multiplying and cheapened, 
and the Panama Canal open, these lands face all the congested areas 
in the world. On the east their doors open to Europe and Africa; on 
the west, to the millions of Asia. Latin America will have its day in the 
twentieth century. Calderon predicts a population of 250,000,000 by the 
end of the century. There are many who believe it can maintain a popu- 
lation of 500,000,000, or one third the world's present total. — Commission 
J — Conference on Christian Work in Latin America. 



CHAPTER II 
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR LATIN AMERICA 

Chkistopher Columbus discovered South America in 
1498. About four hundred years later the United States 
began to catch up with him. 

The war has moved this process of rediscovering South 
America, which has been going on for many years, several 
speeds forward. The war has made lightning as well as 
thunder, and as by a vivid flash it has shown to us far more 
clearly than before our neighbors to the south. New trade 
relations have developed, many of them by necessity, and a 
new realization of a unity of interest between North and 
South America has been stimulated. Large fruits of this 
new discovery of South America are already manifest in the 
political, commercial, scientific, and the religious world. We 
are linked arm in arm with the largest of the republics of 
South America, Brazil, an ally in the war for democracy, and 
that new relationship has contributed to the new interest. 

Latin America 

Other causes, notably the opening of the Panama Canal 
and our relations with Mexico, have brought into the mind 
of the country the larger area of which South America is a 
part— Latin America. It is a good name for citizens of the 
United States to learn — ** Latin America." It is good for 
our humility, for it reminds us of what we so easily forget, 
that the United States is not all there is to '^America." 
Latin America stretches from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn 
and includes Mexico, Central America, Panama, and three 
islands of the West Indies. Widely diverse in respect to 
progress, situation, and climate it has a common background 

35 



36 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

of language, tradition, and religion and similar racial stock. 
Its problems are to a large extent the same. It includes 
twenty nations, a population of 80,000,000 of people and an 
area of almost 8,500,000 square miles — three times the size 
of the United States. Eighteen millions are whites, 17,000,- 
000 Indians, 6,000,000 Negroes, and of mixed white and 
Indian, 30,000,000. Of mixed white and Negro there are 
8,000,000, 700,000 mixed Negro and Indian, and 300,000 
East Indian, Japanese, and Chinese. 

This vast area presents to the United States a maze of 
interesting possibilities in politics, in trade, fascinating to 
think of and plan for. 

But to the heart and conscience of the Protestant 
churches of the United States it presents more than that. In 
an hour when our eyes are set on the shining goal of a world 
safe for democracy, it presents the need of a group of na- 
tions struggling against tremendous handicaps in the enter- 
prise of democracy and pitifully lacking in many of the fun- 
damental necessities for a safe, free, and permanent democ- 
racy. It presents also the momentous question. What shall 
be the ideals which shall control the life of this vast section 
of the world, which unquestionably will hold within a cen- 
tury over 250,000,000 people? 

The Rediscovery of South America 

We are learning in the United States a new set of 
A B C's. That lesson is in the importance, present and 
future, of the A. B. C. countries, Argentina, Brazil, and 
Chile, the leading republics of South America. When these 
three countries came together with the United States and 
Mexico in conference at Niagara Falls in an attempt to settle 
oui' differences with Mexico, the conference failed to ac- 
complish that result. But it was highly successful in ac- 
complishing something else, just as important or more so — 
a new knowledge of South America on the part of the United 
States, and a new appreciation of the need and possibilities 



LATIN AMERICA 



37 




SOUTH AMERICA— THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE 

The heavy black shading indicates the territory occupied by the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
The white spaces show the unoccupied territory for which it is responsible. The lighter vertical 
shading marks the countries in which the Methodist Church South is at work. 

of cooperation with her countries for great purposes of 
common interest. 



Reasons for Neglect and Ignorance of South America 

There are many reasons for the ignorance of South 
America on the part of people in the United States, and most 



38 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

of them are not flattering. A self-satisfied complacency is 
one of the chief ones. Vague, incorrect ideas have found a 
congenial soil in our national hotbed of ignorance. We have 
taken Baron Munchausen as one of our leading authorities 
on South America, supplemented, perhaps, by 0. Henry and 
Richard Harding Davis. To large numbers of people. South 
America has been, and unfortunately is to-day, a land of 
^'fevers and revolutions,'' a suitable theme for comic opera 
and exciting fiction. 

The American business man, ^'the hustler," whom we 
have raised into a myth of efficiency, has succeeded in get- 
ting only 29 per cent of the trade of Latin America largely 
because he has not taken the trouble to learn the facts about 
it. The trade of Latin America with the rest of the world 
has been growing far more rapidly than with the United 
States. The assumption that there was little in South 
America worth learning about has been a costly one and is 
coming to an abrupt end in the world of trade. 

A New Interest 

Many forces fortunately have conspired in the last few 
years to turn the eyes of the United States to South Amer- 
ica. The Panama Canal has made a new water map of the 
world and brought the west coast of South America within 
easy reach. The whiz of bullets across the Mexican border 
turned our eyes to the South and brought South America 
within view, as well as Mexico. Real information is begin- 
ning to filter through our hazy preconceptions and prej- 
udices. Travel has increased between the continents. Vis- 
its of eminent statesmen like Mr. Root, Lord Bryce, Mjr. 
Roosevelt, and scientific expeditions, have had wide educa- 
tional value. Trade with South America has increased and 
expanded in many directions and a new knowledge of the 
commercial and agricultural possibilities has quickened in- 
terest greatly. 

Striking expressions of this new interest abound. The 



LATIN AMERICA 39 

Pan- American Bureau, housed in a great building at Wash- 
ington, is a powerful organization under the active support 
of the President of the United States and the presidents of 
South American republics to promote closer relationship. 
In 1915 two conferences of immense importance were held 
in Washington. One was a gathering of financiers repre- 
senting twenty-one American republics, held under the aus- 
pices of the United States government. The second was a 
Pan-American Scientific Congress which brought a group of 
visitors from Latin America more broadly representative 
than any other group ever assembled in America. More 
deeply significant than either of these was the Congress on 
Christian work in Latin America which was held at Panama 
in February, 1916. Four hundred and eighty-one delegates, 
of whom 230 were appointed by denominational mission 
boards from practically all the Christian countries of the 
world, made up a congress unique in the New World's his- 
tory of missions. Its reports are the most exhaustive study 
of the social, educational, and spiritual conditions of Latin 
America ever made. Its results in closer cooperation and 
advance mark a new epoch in the history of missions in the 
two Americas. The turning of all these new streams of in- 
terest toward South America heralds a new day for the 
whole continent. 

The Magnitude of South Ameeica 

To try to convey any vivid idea of the size of South 
America means a riot of the imagination, Kipling tells 
us that ^' there are forty different ways of inditing tribal 
lays ' ' and remarks that ' ' every single one of them is right. ' ' 
There are also forty different ways of giving first aid to 
the imagination in its effort to consider the size of South 
America, and every single one of them is true. Have you 
an imperial mind that delights to ^' think in continents"? 
Then try this: South America is three times as large as 
China and four times as large as India. Brazil itself, the 



40 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 



fourth largest country in the world, is larger than the whole 
of EurojDe. Perhaps your own country's size means more 
to you. Then remember that the whole United States could 

be put into Brazil and 
leave room for four 
States the size of New 
York. The Argentine 
Republic, which is cus- 
tomarily thought of as 
about as large as Penn- 
sylvania or, to be gen- 
erous, as Pennsylvania 
and New York, could 
hold all of the United 
States east of the Mis- 
sissippi plus the first 
tier of States west of it. 
Perhaps we think more 
clearly in terms of a 
smaller area. Try a 
' ' little ' ' country like 
Venezuela. Texas, 
which we think of as an 
empire in itself, would 
go into Venezuela twice, 
leaving room for Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee. 
We call Chile ' ' the shoe- 
string republic, ' ' but we 
forget what a large shoe 
it would make a string 
for ! Narrow, it is true, 
but long enough to reach from New York to San Francisco 
and have enough left to tie a knot with. Its area is four 
times that of Nebraska. 

South America has larger areas unknown than any con- 
tinent, not excepting Africa. In no other continent could a 




PORTION OF SOUTH AMERICA IX WHICH 

METHODIST EPISCOP.AL CHURCH 

IS AT WORK 

This includes the leading republics of Argentine and 
Chile and a third of the population of the continent. 



LATIN AMERICA 41 

hunter plunge into the wilderness and emerge with a whole 
new, unknown river system as his game, as Mr. Roosevelt 
did in Brazil with the "River of Doubt.'' 

Wealth 

The wealth of South America is literally boundless - 
Half the rubber of the world comes from tropical America. 
From Brazil alone comes four fifths of the world's coffee 
supply, and from its diamond fields more gems than any 
part of the world except South Africa. Argentina alone, in 
1914, possessed over 123,000,000 head of live stock — sheep, 
cattle, horses, pigs, etc. Chile produced in 1913 nitrates val- 
ued at $128,000,000. The supposedly barren wastes of Peru 
the same year yielded 1,700,000 tons of sugar cane, and from 
its mines was shipped $10,000,000 worth of copper. Inter- 
national trade has grown from $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,- 
000 in the last ten years ; and the Hon. John Barrett predicts 
that in the five years following the war it will increase to 
$5,000,000,000. 

The Futuke 

When we look toward the future, as we cannot help look- 
ing, the natural resources, coupled with its comparatively 
small population, make it clear that South America will wit- 
ness as great development in population, and economic and 
social transformation, as any other continent of the world, 
and very probably greater. It is the last great unoccupied 
area of the habitable world, except sections of Africa and 
Malaysia. The stream of immigration had already set in 
with a strong current before the war. In 1913 about a mil- 
lion immigrants landed in South America. There are nearly 
half a million Italians near Buenos Ayres in Argentina. 
Most of the emigration has been from Europe, but immi- 
grants are commencing to pour in from China and Japan, a 
movement of vast possibilities. As soon as the war is over 
streams of emigration from Europe will start and deepen. 
While the United States will undoubtedly receive some of it, 



42 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

there is no more free land in North America. South Amer- 
ica will claim and receive the largest streams of immigration 
that are going to pour into any of the Western world in the 
next two hundred years. There is no other place for hu- 
manity to go. One of the most conservative estimates is that 
of Lord Bryce, who predicts that in two hundred years the 
population will be 375,000,000; while the common estimate 
that it will one day maintain half a billion, or almost one 
third of the world's present population, is not at all difficult 
to accept. 

South America is on the threshold of a future whose 
possibilities cannot be measured. The guarantees of a 
future population and future wealth are here. But here also 
is the certatiny of a materialistic, agnostic civilization, weak 
in moral character and spiritual ideals, unless the saving 
force of a free and full gospel of Christ can be built into the 
life of the continent. 

A Continent In Need 

The appeal of South America to Christian North Amer- 
ica is the same appeal which comes from any land without 
the strong vitalizing influences of a free, living, spiritual 
Christianity. But that appeal is strongly reenforced by two 
considerations. The first is the responsibility which its 
nearness and unity of interests with North America put 
upon us. The second consideration is the timely one of 
the needs of its democracy, the necessity of the varied influ- 
ences of a vital Protestant Christianity if the democracies 
of South America are to be the true homes of freedom and 
justice. 

It is not presumption nor ambition nor a narrow sectar- 
ianism which forces the Protestant Church to regard South 
America as a mission field and a desperately needy one. 
The Roman Catholic Church has been in South America for 
four hundred years, and the fruits of its stewardship in that 
time, for the most part, constitute an urgent call for a living 



LATIN AMERICA 43' 

and free Christianity. Even in case one should question the 
justifiableness of sending missionaries to Roman Catholic 
South America, there are still the millions of neglected 
people, especially the Indians, for whom the church is doing 
in most cases nothing at all. It fails utterly to occupy vast 
regions. 

But beyond that, South America is not a Roman Cath- 
olic continent in any real sense. The men in the civilized 
and more enlightened centers have practically all left the 
Roman Church and are swinging in a body to unbelief. An- 
other thing which must not be forgotten is that the Roman- 
ism of South America is not the Romanism of the United 
States. In that country it is weighted down with crass mate- 
rialism and dense ignorance; its moral life is weak and its 
spiritual witness faint. 

**No Plymouth Rock" 

^^ South America had no Mayflower and no Plymouth 
Rock. ' ' This famous sentence is the key to the condition of 
South America and to much of its history. The Europeans 
who came first to South America were impelled by the spirit 
of adventure, the lust for gold, the desire for conquest. The 
founders of New England were driven by a love for liberty, 
the desire to worship God after the dictates of their own 
conscience. The settlers of North America came from 
those countries of Northwestern Europe where there was 
the greatest freedom. They came to set up new homes. 
The conquerors of South America were militarists from 
the most absolute monarchy in western Europe, and came 
bent on destroying and carrying away all they could get 
their hands on. By giving proper place to this difference 
of purpose and ideals and racial stock we have explained 
much of the divergence between the history of the two 
continents. 

We have seen what are the requirements for a safe and 
free democracy — universal education, a pure and elevated 



44 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 




home life, moral foundations in character, a strong public 
opinion, and spiritual ideals. We find in South America a 
continent in desperate need of these great pillars of Democ- 
racy. 

Need of Education 

In few nations is illiteracy more pronounced. The 
following percentage of illiteracy will show the appalling 
situation at a glance. In Argentina the percentage of illit- 
erates is 50 per cent; in Uruguay, 50 per cent; in Chile, 65 
per cent ; in Paraguay, 90 per cent ; in Colombia, 80 per cent; 

and in Brazil, 70 per 
cent. This will mean 
more when we remem- 
ber that for the United 
States the average is 7.3 
per cent. To remedy 
this stigma of illiteracy 
the governments are do- 
ing very little, except in 
the higher branches of 
education. The ele- 
mentary schools are the 
least developed part of 
the educational system. 
It should be remem- 
bered that mixed races, 
such as the white and 
Indian or the white and 
Negro, form 40 per cent 
of the population of the 
continent. The univer- 
sities and higher schools are almost entirely for the intel- 
lectuals or those of pure white blood, of whom there are 
less than fifteen million. There are large and well- 
equipped universities, in cities like Buenos Ayres, under 
state control and a strongly marked leadership of highly 



LITERACY CHART OF SOUTH AMERICA 

The percentage of the population of the difTerent 
countries who can read and write is indicated by the 
diagonal shading. 



LATIN AMERICA 45 

educated men. The universities are nonreligious and the 
students and professors are almost to a man agnostic or 
openly infidel. 

MoEAL Ideals 

**We cannot," says Burke, ^ indict a whole people." 
We cannot overlook the moral idealism which has been 
active in South America or cast any slur on its pure, good 
womanhood. But we cannot overlook the fact that countries 
where from twenty to over sixty per cent of the people are 
of illegitimate birth are lands of desperate moral need. 
From one fifth to one sixth of the population of Brazil are 
of illegitimate birth; in Venezuela it is two thirds; in 
Ecuador, one half; in Chile, one third. Male chastity is al- 
most unknown. Drink has nearly wiped out the Indians. 
Professor Edward A. Ross says, ^'The state has entered into 
a kind of partnership with the church; the former to sell 
alcohol to the Indians (having a monopoly of its sale), and 
the latter to provide in her festivals the occasion for its con- 
sumption. ' ' ^ Alcoholism is particularly rife on the west 
coast. In Valparaiso, Chile, there is one saloon for every 
twenty-four men. That city, with a population of 180,000, 
had 600 more cases of drunkenness reported in one year 
than all London, with a population of 5,000,000. 

Religious Needs 

Back of moral needs is a condition of spiritual destitu- 
tion. The question of the need of Protestantism in all Latin 
America is not a question of church order ; not at all a his- 
torical question whether the Roman Church has provided 
there a true ministry. It is the inescapable conclusion that 
the old, mediaeval superstitions of the church life that is 
there are inadequate to furnish the moral and spiritual 
leadership needed to bring South America out into the 
liberty of a new national life in the faith of Christ. The 

'• E. A. Ross, South of Panama. 



46 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Bible in South America is an unknown book. The gospel of 
a living Christ is an unknown story. Lord Bryce sums up 
the moral conditions of South America in the last chapter of 
his book in these words : ^'It is a grave misfortune that both 
the intellectual life and the ethical standards of conduct 
seem to be entirely divorced from religion.'' At least one 
half of the men of these South American republics have 
broken finally from Rome. The intellectual class has moved 
almost in a body into skepticism and agnosticism. In a re- 
cent Y. M. C. A. canvass only four students out of five thou- 
sand in Buenos Ayres reported any belief in God or faith in 
Christianity. That condition is typical of the universities 
and educated classes everywhere. Robert E. Speer writes, 
"I do not believe that of the one million peoi3le in Buenos 
Ayres, there are two hundred men on any given Sunday at 
service." Surely, doubt and denial of all faiths, spreading 
apace and unchecked among eighty millions of people, con- 
cern the entire Christian world. ''Churches with modern 
religious scholarship and strong faith are bound to offer in- 
tellectual Latins the torch with which to relight the falling 
or darkened lamps of Christian belief and life. ' ' 

The Centenaky Pkogram and South America 

Despite the heroic achievements of a small band of mis- 
sionaries in South America and results of large promise, it 
has been ''The Neglected Continent'' in Christian missions 
as well as in many other ways. The total number of or- 
dained foreign missionaries in all of South America in 1916 
was only 320. That means one ordained clergj^man of the 
evangelical churches for every 156,250 of the population. 
In America the ratio is one to every 622. There are four 
times as many Protestant ordained ministers in the State of 
Ohio as in all of South America. 

The Centenary Program of the Methodist Church plans 
to build, in an adequate way, on the foundations already laid 
to meet its share of responsibility and opportunity. The 




"^w 



^^»l:-. 



LATIN AMEEICA 47 

estimates do not call for the complete occupation of the fields 
open to Methodism. That would involve staggering 
amounts. But they do provide for a strategic advance 
through the doors that have been opened. The missions in 
South America have made a fine beginning, in which exploits 
of heroism and persistence in the face of great obstacles 
have been done which will rank with the great chapters of 
missionary history. Methodism has to-day 157 missionaries 
and foreign workers, 239 native preachers and workers, and 
152 teachers, a membership of 15,000 and 6,000 unbaptized 
adherents. There are 16 educational institutions and over 
2,500 students. The church is at work in 8 of the republics 
whose total population is 23,000,000. The totals of results 
are not nearly so great as the obstacles and distances, but 
represent a remarkable achievement in the face of all the 
circumstances. 

Establishment of Churches 

As everywhere, the great aims is the establishment 
of a self-supporting, self-propagating native church. The 
method in its essence is that of the successful establishment 
of Christianity anywhere, the proclamation of a ^'know- 
able ' ' gospel by extensive itinerating. It is the old strategy 
of the pioneer preaching on the frontier in the days of the 
saddlebag, of John Wesley among the coal miners, of the 
apostle Paul in Corinth and Ephesus. There is a marked 
evangelical stir on both the east and west coasts. A wide- 
spread evangelistic movement appears to be approaching in 
South America, and the Centenary Program provides for 
the occupation of new territory and the creation of new 
churches. It calls for such additions to the missionary 
forces as will make possible a continent-wide program of 
church development. This will require 24 missionary 
preachers and 84 national (that is, inhabitants of South 
America) preachers; 86 churches and chapels and 31 par- 
sonages and 4 missionary residences. The financial outlay 



48 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

for the staff and maintenance will be $588,180 ; for property 
about $1,500,000. All the figures of the Centenary survey 
cover a five-year period. 

Education 

In the case of such crying- need as the illiteracy of South 
America discloses, educational work is both large, immedi- 
ate service and the pathway to ultimate leadership. To win 
leadership in a non-Christian or belated Christian country 
Christian education must be the very center of the move- 
ment. In the republics where the Methodist Church is at 
work illiteracy averages almost 75 per cent. Unless there is 
developed an extensive system of education the danger ap- 
pears of creating churches of illiterates. The state schools 
are entirely unqualified to produce moral leadership or fur- 
nish gospel ministry. In large areas the state schools do not 
even exist. The educational program looks out on the need 
in both directions — the need for primary schools of ele- 
mentary education and higher training schools, universities, 
and colleges in order to rear an educated Christian leader- 
ship with which to stem the tides of infidelity and immoral- 
ity among the educated classes. Bishop Homer C. Stuntz 
says that the battle for the conversion of South America, 
within the next hundred years, will be won or lost in the edu- 
cational institutions that are planted there. To engage in 
this battle with the stake of a continent for Christianity as 
its prize, the Centenary Movement proposes 29 elementary 
schools, 14 high schools, 3 colleges, 1 agricultural school, and 
4 seminary and training schools. The staff required will be 
126 missionary teachers and 158 national (South Amer- 
ican) teachers. The total cost will be about $1,000,000 for 
staff and maintenance and about $2,000,000 for property. 
In the primary schools will be taught elementary industrial 
instruction, hygiene and sanitation, and religion, as well as 
the common elementary branches. The Methodist Church 
will cooperate with other denominations in a union theolog- 
ical seminary at Montevideo in Uruguay and in two union 



LATIN AMERICA 49 

evangelical universities, one for each coast. In addition to 
this direct service there is now a chance to impress the edu- 
cational movement in South America with the Christian 
point of view, and to give character, tone, motive, and defi- 
nite ends to the educational policies of all the Latin Amer- 
ican republics. 

Along with this program of education there is imme- 
diate need to enlarge the two publishing houses already in 
operation, one on the east and one on the west coast, so 
that they can spread broadcast clean moral and religious 
literature. Much of the general literature now accessible to 
Latin America young people is of a nature so vile that if a 
man were detected in an attempt to bring specimens of it 
into the United States even as personal property, he would 
be arrested and punished. 

Medical. 

The number of hospitals of the Methodist Church at the 
present time in the whole of South America is a tragical 
zero. And that in a land where the state hospitals are not 
adequate to care for ten per cent of the people. South 
America has no hospitals, no nurses' training school, nor 
deaconess home under any mission board. Outside of such 
progressive centers as Buenos Ayres, and in countries less 
advanced than Argentina, the neglect of public hygiene is 
appalling. In some sections smallpox is a continuous epi- 
demic. In Chile, where there is one of the finest climates of 
the world, the death rate is twice as high as that of the 
United States. Dr. Speer calls Chile ^^a killing ground for 
children. ' ' Seventy-five per cent of the children die before 
reaching two years of age. Among the neglected and pov- 
erty-stricken millions of Indians the death rate of children is 
even higher than that. 

The present proposal is for the establishment of a hos- 
pital and nurses ' training school in the capital city of five of 
the republics, both as a work of mercy and evangelizing 
force of high value. 



50 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Panama 

The Republic of Panama has been included in these 
estimates of needs of South America. Panama is a key to 
the world in the new trade map and naval map which the 




PANAMA— THE CROSS ROADS OF THE WORLD 

opening of the canal has made. If the Church of Christ 
should be located "Where cross the crowded ways of life," 
Panama is a good place, for it has become ''the crossroads 
of the nations'' and will be increasingly so. In two growing 
cosmopolitan cities, Panama and Colon, along what is likely 
to become the greatest commercial highway on the globe, 



LATIN AMEEICA 51 

Methodism is already located and must be strengthened. 
All of Panama, outside the Canal Zone, with 300,000 Indians, 
mostly living in stark paganism with no Christian effort 
directed toward them, has been given to the Methodist 
Church as its sole responsibility, with churches and schools 
to be provided. 

The Chkistian Intekpketation of the Monkoe Doctrine 

The Monroe doctrine, by which we have said to all the 
world for a century, ''Keep hands off South America,'^ com- 
mits the United States to a peculiar responsibility for it. 
Not all the interpretations of that doctrine have been looked 
on with favor in South America. The Monroe doctrine is 
often regarded as patronage and as the cover for an undue 
domination of South American affairs and an affront to her 
independence. What is called ' ' the North American peril, ' ' 
the danger of aggression from the United States, has been 
widely heralded and believed. A large step in an interpreta- 
tion of the Monroe doctrine which will replace jealousy and 
suspicion by cooperation is that which Secretary of State 
Lansing gave at the Pan-American Scientific Congress in 
1915 and which met with a hearty support of the South 
American delegates. It is that of a Pan- Americanism which 
rallies around the common standard of the rights of hu- 
manity and the defense of these rights as represented in the 
western hemisphere. 

There is a Christian interpretation of the Monroe doc- 
trine which must supplement all others. It is the responsi- 
bility of the LTnited States to bring to South America the liv- 
ing Christ, who came that all men might have life, and have 
it more abundantly, so that in its own way and under its own 
leadership that great continent may develop the moral and 
spiritual forces strong enough to guide and shape its great 
development. 

New doors are opened. The long battle for religious 
liberty is issuing in victory. Through the heroic efforts of 
Protestant missionaries and often under their leadership, 



52 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

constitutions have been rewritten granting religious liberty 
to eight tenths of the people of South America. Old tethers 
are being worn away. Will the church match the new oppor- 
tunity with new endeavor? 

Mexico 
A Giant Mission-Study Class 

Probably the most remarkable mission-study class ever 
known was that conducted in Mexico during four recent 
years by Victoriano Huerta and Pancho Villa. If the aim 
of a mission-study class is to produce a strong realization 
of a country's need, that class was an unusual success. The 
revolution and anarchy which prevailed, the raids of Villa 's 
bandits across the border, the imminent danger of war and 
the sending of costly military expeditions by the United 
States, all riveted the attention of the nation to the glaring 
fact that there was something desperately wrong in Mexico. 
This violent and effective projection of Mexico into the con- 
sciousness of the United States led to many different con- 
clusions. The, voice of the military interventionist was loud 
in the land. With eloquent phrases about the vindication of 
American rights, he pointed to military conquest as the only 
means of quelling the disturbances which are a menace to 
the peace and interests of the United States. When stripped 
of its oratorical trappings, however, this remedy is seen to 
involve an enormous military effort calling for millions of 
men and money, and a long time, with the question of the 
complete subjugation of Mexico doubtful even then. The 
Mexicans as a race are proud and brave. They are bitterly 
resentful of forcible intervention. The vast extent of 
Mexico and the deep mountain fastnesses would make it pos- 
sible for resistance to hold out indefinitely. 

And even if we conquered Mexico, what result would we 
have? We would either have to annex it and admit it as a 
State in the Union or hold it as subject territory in an im- 
perialistic manner. Either alternative is revolting. Fifteen 



LATIN AMERICA 53 

millions of people, 80 per cent of whom are illiterate, unused 
to democratic institutions such as ours, are not ready for 
statehood and cannot conceivably be ready for a generation, 
perhaps for many. The United States is not ready for the 
other alternative — of becoming a conquering, imperialistic 
power. It would be too dangerous to the safety of our demo- 
cratic institutions at home. 

The Only Solutioit of ^ ^ The Mexican Problem ' ' 

Even when the attention which the disturbances in 
Mexico drew to the country had no result except the pes- 
simistic and disgusted conclusion that there was '^no hope 
for order in Mexico," that result has a high value, for it 
points inevitably to the conclusion that the only salvation of 
democracy in Mexico is not the application of force on the 
outside, but the development of new forces on the inside. 
The United States has realized that its career is indissolu- 
bly bound together with that of its nearest foreign terri- 
tory on the south. The one great result of our mixed prob- 
lems in Mexico is a growing realization that Mexico will be 
a source of ceaseless anxiety and danger to the people of the 
United States until the national thinking and ideals are 
brought to higher levels. Democracy will never be safe in 
Mexico either for that country or the United States until 
the forces which make democracy safe anyivhere are brought 
in}:o action and developed — universal education, freedom 
from economic slavery, enlightened public opinion, strong 
moral character, and religious life. The only solution of 
the Mexican problem is the Christian solution, an invasion 
of Christian preachers, teachers, and physicians, the estab- 
lishment of churches, schools, and hospitals that will enable 
Mexico to start realizing her own destiny of strong and en- 
lightened self-government and moral and spiritual progress. 
The United States government in 1917 spent enough money 
in the patrol of the Mexican border on the Pershing expedi- 
tion the first six months to build a college, a hospital, a 



54 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

cliurcli, and a social settlement, all magnificently equipped, 
in every town of over 1,000 people in tlie republic of Mexico, 
and to provide for their maintenance for ten years. Can 
there be any doubt that the latter expenditure would have 
insured a safe democracy there, as the military expedition 
utterly failed to do ? 

The Needs of Democracy in Mexico 

The strong searchlight of national interest which has 
been swinging across our southern border for five years has 
revealed the glaring handica^DS which democracy has in 
Mexico. 

Illiteracy 

Eighty per cent of the population of Mexico is illiterate. 
Schools are few in number, and even in times of peace the 




■^^Sll 



MEXICO— OUR NEAREST NEIGHBOR 

Names in Roman type indicate stations of the Methodist Episcopal Church; those in Italics, 
centers of the Methodist Church South. This map shows the central and commanding position 
the Methodist Church holds in ^Mexico. 

government has made little effort to overcome illiteracy. 
Among the large percentage of the population which is the 



LATIN AMERICA 55 

native aboriginal stock, about forty per cent, education is 
practically unknown. In a condition like this it is clearly 
evident that there can be no intelligent public opinion to 
make possible a stable representative government. 

Slavery 

A democracy must be free, and over half of the popula- 
tion of Mexico is in a state of debt slavery, or peonage, 
which is little to be distinguished from actual slavery. 
Ninety per cent of the land is held by a small fraction of the 
population. The majority of the population, both of the 
aboriginal inhabitants, the Indians, and the mixed race of 
Spanish and Indian stock, are peons, attached to the great 
estates frequently a million acres in extent. They have no 
land of their own and are kept in ignorance and poverty. 
It is the operation of this system of oppression which makes 
the peons so habitually ready to join a revolutionary enter- 
prise or to become bandits. 

Religious Darkness 

Superstition and immoralit}^ are interwoven into the 
very religious life of the nation. The religious destitution 
of the Indians is a vivid indication of the spiritual darkness 
of Mexico. For four hundred years since their discovery 
by white men they have been left without the Bible and the 
knowledge of the living Christ. The Roman Catholic 
Church has not only failed to provide an open Bible and 
the preaching of a spiritual Christianity, but it has been for 
the most part the relentless foe of free thought and speech, 
a free press and free public schools. It has been the agent 
of the rule of oppression and the means of exploitation of 
the people. For these reasons it is losing its hold on think- 
ing people. 

The Present Opportunity 

In spite of the revolution and the famine and disease 
and destruction of missionary property, the opportunity for 



56 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Protestant missionary success in Mexico was never so bright. 
Revolutionary conditions are gone. Organized opposition 
to the present Mexican government has disappeared. Gen- 
uine elections have been held and the government is grad- 
ually coming into a secure position. 

The attitude of the present government toward religion 
as expressed in the new constitution has been interpreted 
as uncompromisingly hostile. The constitution provides for 
a complete separation of church and state. Foreign reli- 
gious leaders, priests and ministers, are not allowed to work 
in the country. But that provision is designed to kill the 
political influence of the Roman Church. It was not in- 
tended to interfere with Protestant religious work, and has 
not in any way interfered with it. Catholicism is in marked 
disfavor with the present government because of Roman 
opposition to the revolutionary party now in power. The 
Protestant missionaries are not allowed to administer the 
sacraments, but they have remained in Mexico and are un- 
hindered in their work of teaching and preaching and pub- 
lishing. The courage and heroism of missionaries in stick- 
ing to their posts in the time of greatest need and danger 
has created an extremely favorable disposition toward 
Protestant Christianity. 

Never was the response to a vital Protestant Christian- 
ity so large in Mexico as to-day. The weakening of the 
power of the priests and the liberalizing influences of the 
revolution on religious thought have furthered a marked re- 
sponse to evangelizing efforts. Never have such crowds at- 
tended Protestant preaching services. In 1917 a great re- 
vival in Mexico City resulted in the professed conversion of 
nearly one thousand people. There is a new eagerness to 
read Christian literature. The sale of Bibles has increased 
over four times in the last few years. In 1917 it was well 
over one hundred thousand. 

Many of the constitutionalist generals and other leaders 
are either Protestants or attendants on Protestant service. 
Mexican Protestant Christians are hopeful and active. The 



LATIN AMERICA 57 

various Mission Boards working in Mexico have taken ad- 
vanced steps in cooperation and union activities. All these 
are unmistakable signs that Mexico is at the threshold of a 
new era in religious development. 

The Centenaey Response 

The Centenary Program of Methodism in Mexico plans 
a response to this enlarged opportunity. It is not a large 
financial outlay that is called for. It is in no way adequate 
to completely meet the responsibility, and yet a program 
that is teeming with possibilities. 

Methodism in Mexico is a 'Agoing concern." The revo- 
lution did not stop it. There was only one thing which could 
cause the superintendent of the mission for many years, 
one of the most-loved and trusted men in all the country, 
John Wesley Butler, to leave Mexico. That was the sum- 
mons to another world, which came in March, 1918. Under 
his leadership and helped by his efforts, Methodism has 
grown in Mexico to a total of members and adherents of 
20,000, with 5,000 students in her schools. There is a total 
staff of 21 missionaries, 143 native preachers and workers, 
and 169 teachers. There are 64 churches and chapels. 

Evangelistic 

Methodism has a sole responsibility for three of the fif- 
teen million inhabitants of Mexico. Much damage has been 
inflicted by the disturbances of the revolution. Buildings 
have been plundered and burned. Famine, disease, and un- 
certain conditions have made the work precarious. But 
these losses are more than compensated for by the new re- 
sponse to evangelistic efforts which characterizes conditions 
since the revolution. The largest public congregation in the 
City of Mexico, Protestant or Catholic, meets in the Meth 
odist church, over a thousand people as a rule, with mam 
standing. An extension of direct preaching throughout the 
country will produce large results. The number of evan- 
gelists and pastors and local churches must be increased in 



58 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

order to cover the area allotted to Methodism. Seventy- 
seven additional churches, 4 missionaries and 78 native 
preachers are the efficiency requirements for this need. 

Education 

The Methodist schools in Mexico are few, but influen- 
tial out of all proportion to their size and numbers. They 
have been a large means of disarming prejudice and gain- 
ing the good will of the people. With proper expansion they 
will be an increasing influence. The appalling illiteracy, the 
absence of all moral and religious education in the govern- 
ment schools, make an irresistible appeal for Christian edu- 
cation. The Centenary Program calls for a minimum of 66 
schools, 102 native teachers, the strengthening of the exist- 
ing secondary schools and cooperation with other denomina- 
tions in two great union educational enterprises, a central 
Christian university, and a union theological seminary in 
Mexico City. 

Medical. 

The conditions of war have increased the need for med- 
ical help, a need that was already large. Abounding filth 
and avoidable disease spread throughout the country. Only 
in the large cities are there state hospitals and physicians, 
and these are almost entirely for the wealthy. The one hos- 
pital and dispensary which the church has, serves exclusively 
an area of two hundred and fifty by four hundred miles con- 
taining a million people. It is a center of healing and sani- 
tation and social betterment. It must be strengthened and 
medical work expanded. 

The Rise of a National Church 

A day of large promise for the development of a vigor- 
ous Protestant Christian Church of Mexico is here. Some 
idea of the vitality of the Mexican Methodist Church may be 
gained from the fact that of the $200,000 a year asked for 
five years for the expansion of the work of the church in 



LATIN AMERICA 59 

Mexico, over one third of the amount is to be raised in Mex- 
ico itself! Mexicans are taking new responsibilities of 
leadership and support. It is not the Americanization of 
Mexico to which we are called, but to a task better than that. 
It is to supply in these shaping years the fertilizing forces 
of the gospel by which a strong Mexican church and nation 
may rise. The urgent call, in the words of Bishop F. J. Mc- 
Connell, is to ^^take the Lord Jesus Christ to Mexico to let 
him work out his own plans for the Mexican people. ' * 



The Chinese Question is the world question of the twentieth cen- 
tury. — B. L. Putnam Weale. 

The crucifixion was two hundred and eighty years old before Chris- 
tianity won toleration in the Roman empire. It was one hundred and 
twenty-eight years after Luther's defiance before the permanence of the 
Protestant Reformation was assured. After the discovery of the New 
World one hundred and fifteen years elapsed before the first English 
colony was planted here. No one who saw the beginning of these great, 
slow, historic movements could grasp their full import or witness their 
culmination. But nowadays world processes are telescoped and history 
is made at aviation speed. The exciting part of the transformation of 
China will take place in our time. In forty years there will be tele- 
phones and moving picture shov/s and appendicitis and sanitation and 
baseball nines and bachelor maids in every one of the thirteen hundred 
districts of the empire. The renaissance of a quarter of the human 
family is occurring before our eyes, and we have only to sit in the parquet 
and watch the stage. — Edward A. Ross, The Changing Chinese. 



CHAPTER III 

CHINA— THE OPEN DOOR TO FOUR HUNDRED 
MILLION MINDS 

Communication Tkenches 

A RECENT picture in the illustrated weekly papers of a 
group of several hundred Chinese laborers digging com- 
munication trenches behind the Allied lines in France is a 
vivid symbol of the position of China in the world to-day. 
Two forces of vast significance are symbolized in that pic- 
ture: the fact that the ancient autocracy of China is lined 
up with the forces of democracy in the great conflict; and 
also that that great people, from one fourth to one fifth of 
the human race, which for ages has built around itself a solid 
wall of exclusiveness, is to-day building communication 
trenches out to all the world. The war has extended and 
quickened the transformation of China, a process already 
going on at express speed, and a movement of unsurpassed 
importance in modern history. 

The Awakening Giant 

To try to picture the transformation which China is 
undergoing puts a hard strain on the dictionary. Writers 
on China in the past fifteen years have ransacked the dic- 
tionary for all the words that look like the Whirlpool Rapids 
below Niagara Falls and have pressed them into service. 
We have had in rapid succession China in Convulsion, the 
Conflict of Color, The Changing Chinese, The New Day in 
China, The Uplift, The Awakening, The Emergency, The 
Revolution, China Inside Out, and China Upside Down. It 
takes a whole conspiracy of picturesque words to express 

63 



64 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

what is going on. It is a political revolution, a moral ad- 
vance, an intellectual renaissance, a religious reformation, 
and a nineteenth century of scientific and industrial develop- 
ment all combined. 

More than a century ago that far seeing genius. Na- 
poleon, said of China, the memorable and oft-quoted words : 
' ' Yonder is a sleeping giant. Do not wake him. ' ' But there 
are more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in 
Napoleon's philosophy. The giant has been awakened, 
startled bolt upright, by forces in which Napoleon little 
reckoned ; by another giant which in Napoleon's day was ly- 
ing asleep in the teakettle — steam ; by the long-distance flash 
of the electric wire; and last, but by no means least, by the 
inspiration of the long-distance reach of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

The awakening in China, part of the great transforma- 
tion which is making a new era through Asia, can be fitly 
compared only to the Renaissance in Europe in the fifteenth 
century which was the transition from the Middle Age to the 
Modern — a ^'new birth" to a new and larger life through 
the revival of learning. Men look back to those days, the 
'' spacious days" of discovery, of political and religious 
reformation, of the birth of modern science, as one of the 
greatest creative epochs in history. Yet the new awakening 
now going on in the Far East, and notably to-day in China, 
surpasses in extent, in rapidity of development, and perhaps 
even in significance, that which took form in Europe in the 
fifteenth century. 

As we look more closely at this many-sided revolution 
in China, three large aspects of it press upon our attention. 
These aspects have been visible for many years, but are 
brought to our minds with a sharpened intensity because of 
the war and its results. The first consideration is that of the 
vastness of the awakening. The second is that of the tremen- 
dous importance to the world of what China becomes. The 
third is the solemn one of the fleeting character of the Chris- 
tian opportunity. 



CHINA 



65 



The Vastness of China's Awakening 

Any vivid sense of the scale of the changes already 
accomplished and now going on in China must have for its 




CHINA 

Strategic centers in the Methodist occupation of China. Chart at the right shows the de- 
velopment of membership and self-support of Methodism in China. 



background a conception of the size and extent of China. A 
population of nearly four hundred millions of people, set in 
one of the most productive areas in the world, one half as 



66 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

large as the United States, including Alaska ; with, coal and 
iron resources as rich as those of any land on earth ; a labor- 
ing class by far the largest and toughest, the most industri- 
ous and economical to be found on the globe — surel}^ here is 
the stage and here are the actors for one of the greatest 
dramas of history. 

This background of the mass of China has far more 
meaning, however, when we add to it the fact that since the 
outbreak against foreigners in the Boxer Revolution in 1901, 
there has developed in seventeen years, a reversal of national 
feeling, an openness to Western influence, such as can hardly 
be matched in all history. The land where once all life had 
crystallized into unchangeable molds has suddenly become 
fluid, plastic, seeking new molds from the Western world. 

The Political Revolution 

The political revolution which in 1911 overthrew the 
Manchu dynasty and made China a republic astounded the 
world, and the world has not yet recovered from its amaze- 
ment. Those who knew China at all had little idea that the 
course of democracy would run smooth. The six years of 
the republic have not been smooth ones. The democratic 
idea is still crude. The great essentials of a safe and sound 
democracy are lacking and must be supplied. The struggle 
for democracy is still on. Nevertheless, the failure of the 
monarchist movement under Yuan Shih Kai and the collapse 
of the attempt of Chang Hsun to restore the Manchu em- 
peror has shown that the heart of China is unmistakably at- 
tached to democracy and to the republic. 

A new emphasis to this new political day in China has 
been given b}^ the response of the republic to the invitation 
of the United States to associate herself with the stand taken 
against the piratical submarine warfare of Germany, Feb- 
ruary 9, 1917. In her affirmative response a far-reaching 
foreign policy was inaugurated and China undoubtedly won 
for herself a new place in the world's esteem. In that rer 



CHINA 67 

sponse and in the subsequent declaration of war on the 
Central Powers, August 14, 1917, ^'for the first time since 
treaty relations with the powers had been established, 
Chinese diplomatic action had swung beyond the walls of 
Peking and embraced the world within its scope. ' ' ^ 

The New Patkiotism 

Along with the political revolution, both as cause and 
effect of it, there is in China a national spirit of patriotism, 
absent ten years ago, but to-day a growing and even a flam- 
ing force. A new self-consciousness of national weakness 
and humiliation over it have generated a nationalism the 
like of which China has never known before. There is an 
ardent resolve that the old, weak China must give way to a 
new, strong China, made solid instead of loosely bound to- 
gether, armed instead of defenseless, self-supporting instead 
of dependent. The action which is resulting from this new 
nationalistic feeling runs along three main lines : the provi- 
sion of an army and navy so that China may be able to re- 
sist foreign aggression; the development of native indus- 
tries ; and the movement for universal education. It will be 
readily seen that this new patriotism contains both large 
promise and peril to Christian influence. It affords a 
splendid new foundation in national feeling on which Chris- 
tianity may build, but it also holds the possibility, that un- 
less the church can so increase its effort during these 
years of opportunity and make itself Chinese in leadership 
and thought, the new patriotism may turn to the native 
faiths as being Chinese, and Christianity may be struggling 
under the odium of being foreign. 

The Moeal. Reformation 

Perhaps the most astounding feature of China's awak- 
ing is the moral advance, strikingly illustrated by the war on 

^ B. L. Putnam- Weale, The Fight for the Republic in China, p. 319. 



68 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

opium begun iu tlie edict of the Empress Dowager in 1906. 
Thirty years ago the majority of the people in Europe and 
America would have as soon thought of gravitation being 
abolished as of opium-smoking being abolished by China. 
E. A. Ross calls the warfare on opium which China con- 
ducted for ten years "the most extensive warfare on a vi- 
cious private habit that the world has ever known. " ^ It 
sprang from a sense that unless the people speedily re- 
nounced the vice that was undermining its manhood, there 
was no hope for China among the nations. It should be re- 
membered that it was the great memorial signed by thir- 
teen hundred and thirty-three missionaries from seven coun- 
tries which drew forth the famous edict abolishing the opium 
trade, much of the edict being the very language of the me- 
morial. The enforcement of the edict against opium was 
carried out strictly and strenuously. Blood was shed and 
millions of dollars' worth of property destroyed.. Vol- 
untary Anti-opium Leagues were formed which entered into 
the fight in many places with the fervor of a religious cru- 
sade. The fight on the habit has had unexpected success, due 
to the rising spirit of jDatriotism which came to its aid. The 
production of opium in China has been cut down seventy or 
eighty per cent and in the process a new force in China is 
being nourished — public opinion. Millions for the first time 
in their lives have thought, "What is the public good!" 
The war on oj^ium is only one phase of the awakening. 
Other moral delinquencies such as the social evil and official 
dishonesty have been dragged forth from their intrenched 
positions and pilloried. 

Educational Awakening 

The educational awakening in China is the real key to 
its future. It must be examined in more detail later in the 
chapter, but its place is central in even the most rapid im- 



The Changing Chinese, p. 146. 




Asia Photo by Olive Gilbreath 

SOME OF OUR CHINESE ALLIES IN FRANCE 




STUDENTS OF PEKING UNIVERSITY COMING FROM THE ASBURY 
METHODIST CHURCH ON THE UNIVERSITY GROUNDS 



CHINA 69 

pression of the vastness of the ^'new birth'' of the nation. 
With the awakening to the need of universal education as 
the only real preparedness for China's future, and the sub- 
stitution of modern education for the ancient system in use 
for two thousand years, China has embarked on the most 
stupendous educational task ever attempted. It involves the 
provision of a million schools to furnish instruction for the 
children of school age. Only two per cent of the children are 
now being educated. Temples are being confiscated in many 
cities to accommodate schools and colleges. The number of 
modern government students in Peking in the decade from 
1905 to 1915 rose from 300 to 17,000, and the pupils in the 
province surrounding from 2,000 to 200,000.^ The new sys- 
tem when completed will call for nearly a million teachers. 
No one with a living imagination can fail to be deeply moved 
by the spectacle of this great people setting itself to the gi- 
gantic task by acquiring a knowledge by which it alone can 
hope to play in the world's affairs a part commensurate with 
its natural strength. 

The Religious Shifting 

Deep as these changes go, there is one that goes deeper. 
It is the moving away from old religious foundations and 
the search for new ones. The religious situation in China 
is an enlargement by four hundred million diameters of 
that picture which has touched the heart of the world, 
"Breaking Home Ties." A great people, more numerous 
than all of Europe, with the exception of Russia, is faring 
forth from its ancestral home of beliefs to find a power 
which its old faiths have failed to supply. Through all 
classes, government officials and scholars and the illiterate 
masses, there is an openness to Christianity. In the classic 
declaration of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference 
in 1910, truer to-day than then — ^ ^ One quarter of the human 



Eddy, The New Era in Asia, p. 15. 



70 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

race is slipping from its spiritual moorings. Surely, never 
was richer freight derelict on tlie waters of time/' 

Importance to the World of What China Becomes 

Swiftly and providentially we are being led out of the 
laundryman stage in our thinking of China. It is idle to 
dream of a peace for the world and a democracy safe for the 
world unless in these formative years the moving mass of 
China settles firmly on the political, moral, and spiritual 
foundations which alone can support a true democracy. 
The population of China doubles itself in about eighty 
years ; that of the rest of the world in about a century. It 
is probable that by the year 2000 it will be close to eight 
hundred million. With a similar growth in Japan, Malay- 
sia, and India this means that the yellow races in a century 
or two will rapidly approach the white race in numbers. It 
is not ''yellow journalists" or "jingos" who foresee that 
unless this inevitable growth in numbers and power is ac- 
companied by a moral and spiritual transformation on the 
inside of China and a truly Christian and unselfish states- 
manship on the part of the powers dealing with her, we may 
witness a race war in comparison with which the present 
conflict will prove only a skirmish.^ It is of vast importance 
to the world what conceptions of life command the alle- 
giance and what principles govern the conduct of the multi- 
tudes of China. There is a real yellow peril in the East, not 
the bugaboo of a war with Japan with which conscienceless 
"jingos" struggle vainly to start strife, but the possibility 
that the new age in China as well as Japan may end in mate- 
rialism. Should China successfully reorganize herself, and 
become an independent industrialized state, given to militar- 
ism, factories, foreign trade, and to all the allurements of 
an age which has lost its head in the mad rush for wealth 
which modern inventions have made possible, she may 
become a great materialistic power and her weight be 



^See Bashford, China: An Interpretation, p. 457. 



CHINA ^ 71 

thrown into the scale against the forces making for moral 
progress and nobler ideals in life, to the infinite loss and 
danger of the world. 

The Fleeting Christian Opportunity 

The Christian Church has in China an opportunity 
boundless in every respect except that of time. China will 
not always be in her present transition. The forces which 
make for the present popularity of Christianity will spend 
themselves by a natural process. China sits to-day at the 
feet of the West in school. But schooldays will pass, in that 
sense, and the young giant will go out from the schoolroom 
door, his industrial and political lessons learned. The 
prominence of the Christian missionary as a pioneer of 
Western culture will some time have an end. Government 
schools will equal, and possibly surpass, missionary schools. 
Will Christianity in this generation so redeem the time that 
when China has learned of the West its arts, its sciences, its 
industry, it shall also have received its best gift, its faith, 
and a virile and expanding Chinese Christianity have come 
into being adequate for the titanic task of shaping the new 
nation? ^^A new China is impossible without renewed 
Chinese. ' ' 

The Eesponse of Methodism 

In the Centenary Program for China the Methodist 
Episcopal Church has planned a thoroughgoing and stra- 
tegic response to this divine opportunity. It is a program 
not based on a guess, nor on vague hopes. It is based on a 
careful survey, the product of the years of study, of the 
actual needs in men and money covering a five-year period 
for putting the present work on an efficient basis for the 
Christianizing of the eighty millions of people for whom 
the church is exclusively responsible. The program rests 
on seventy years of encouraging history and experience. 
In 1847 the first missionaries of the Methodist Church 



72 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

landed in Foocliow. After ten years of intensive labor the 
first converts, thirteen adults, were baptized. In sixty years 
that small company has grown to a Chinese church of 65,900 
members, 7,309 nnbaptized adherents, and a strong native 
leadership of 3,000 preachers. The church won a place of 
educational leadership with 21,000 students in 600 primary 
schools, 12 secondary schools, and 5 universities. Its 11 hos- 
pitals and 2 dispensaries, though understaffed and almost 
without nurses, have performed miracles of healing and 
opened doors more imj)regnable than the great wall of the 
northern kingdom. 

The call for advance is along these three lines of pro^n.- 
dential success. The estimates express the call to Christian 
America to help make democracy safe for China ; to see our 
struggle to admit the world to democracy clear "through 
to the finish" and to help rear in China those pillars without 
which any democracy must crash to the ground — education, 
moral character, and religious ideals. China has wakened 
up, it is true. But " it is one thing to ivalie up. It is another 
thing to get up.'' China will never ''get up" until that gos- 
pel, which is not in word but in power, comes to its strug- 
gling democracy and bids it with a divine potency, "In the 
name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk ! ' ' 

Let us look at this Centenary Program for China in 
education, in that broad proclamation of a rounded gospel 
which may be called evangelism, and in medical luork. 

China's Need for Educatioit 

"The fight for the reiDublic in China" will be in the 
schoolroom. A safe democracy in a nation where illiteracy 
averages 95 per cent of the population as it does in China, 
and where only two per cent of the children are in school is 
unthinkable. It is unthinkable to the leaders in China them- 
selves, and the government, seeing the utter hopelessness of 
a strong China without widespread education, has inaugu- 
rated a movement for education without parallel. 



CHINA 



73 



The key to the Christian opportunity in China is to be 
found in the old ruined examination halls in Peking and 
other capitals of provinces, where examinations under the 




"CHINA'S ONLY HOPE " 

Strategic Christian Educational Centers. Union Universities are located at Peking, Foochow, 
Nanking, and Chengtu. Each of these universities is fed by secondary schools in outlying districts. 



ancient system of education were held. Over thousands of 
these halls reeds and vines are growing. Since the edict of 
1905 abolishing the old system of education and substitut- 
ing modern methods of instruction these halls are crumbling 
into dust. And '^with them has crumbled, not only a kind of 
examination but an attitude toward life, a system of values, 



74 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

a standard of character. The passing of China's old edu- 
cation is the transformation of her life. Now the student 
who would win governmental positions must answer ques- 
tions in European history, in economics, in social science; 
and the old Chinese officials, with their huge goggles, their 
embroidered coats, their clinging to the far past, have gone 
into hiding, never to emerge.'' ^ 

These crumbling halls are the symbol of present Chris- 
tianity in China, not only in that they witness to the eager 
open-mindedness of China, but also because they witness to 
the age-long veneration of the scholar in China. China is 
literally a nation of scholar worshipers. Hence for Chris- 
tianity to win the educated classes through its colleges will 
give it an ascendency over the masses to a degree not to be 
matched in any other land. And when we add to that the 
fact that the educated classes, the literati, are approachable 
to a measure unknown fifteen, or even ten, years ago, the 
opportunity of a strategic Christian victory through educa- 
tional leadership is a large one. 

Democracy's Need of Cheistian Education 

China's need for Christian education is, in biblical lan- 
guage, '^nuch every way." We have seen that the only 
hope of her democratic experiment is in education. The 
government is powerless both to provide all she needs and 
the kiiid she needs. Not for a hundred years to come can 
the government in China care for the education of its own 
children. Even if it were to gather into schools as large a 
percentage of the population as attends school in Japan, it 
would need to provide buildings and teachers for forty mil- 
lions of pupils. 

The fertilizing truth of the gospel brought democracy 
to China, and Christianity must see it through. A half cen- 
tury or more of silent and ceaseless publication of the reli- 



^W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, p. 73. 



CHINA 75 

gious and economic truths of the gospel in a very real way 
laid the mine whose explosion the world saw when the 
Manchus were driven out. In the words of the President 
of China, Li Yuan Hung, ^^ China would not be aroused to- 
day as it is were it not for the missionaries/' A large num- 
ber of the leaders of the new republic were educated in mis- 
sion schools. But the testing of that democracy has only be- 
gun. Christian education must furnish the leaders needed, 
unselfish, true leaders. A live and intelligent public opinion 
has begun to be created, but it nee/is nurture and the devel- 
opment of conscience in the individual. Patriotism, newly 
born, must be stimulated and purged of selfishness. 

Industrial Education 

Democracy cannot survive unless it is solvent. China 
must be self-supporting if she is to be free. She needs tech- 
nical education in order to develop her abundant national re- 
sources, raise the standards of living, and wipe out her curse 
of poverty. It is part of the task of Christianity to provide 
training in scientific agriculture, forestry, and technical 
branches of all kinds so that China may be able to throw 
sure economic foundations under her democracy. 

MOEAL AND EeLIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF CHARACTER 

Here is the real problem of education for democracy, 
the formation of character. It is a problem before which 
China, resting only on her ancient faiths, is helpless. Con- 
fucianism has furnished a great moral restraint to the peo- 
ple of China in its high ethical teaching, but the religions of 
China have proved utterly inadequate to save the people by 
producing sustained and progressive moral character. The 
widespread corruption of officials, of the new as well as of 
the old, is to-day one of the chief obstacles to progress in 
China. It is an obstacle which will never be solved without 
a new moral and religious dynamic. There has come a 



76 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

strong recognition by thoughtful Chinese that without some 
power which can create and strengthen character there is 
little hope of their dreams for their country being realized. 
As Yuan Shih Kai confessed to John R. Mott, ''Confucian- 
ism has ethical ideals but lacks the power to make them 
eifective.'^ It cannot block natural inclinations and wrest 
lives from the grip of appetite and passion without the doc- 
trine of responsibility to God. More than that, with the 
breakdown of Confucianism and the swing away from the 
moral influence it had, oi^ the part of the educated classes, 
the most important question China must answer is, ' 'Whence 
shall come the morality of to-morrow so deeply needed T' 
Christianity must help her find the only sufficient answer. 

The Favoring Conditions for Christian Education 

The Methodist Centenary Program for education in 
China comes at a time when conditions have made a su- 
premely favorable opportunity. 

A Welcome to Christian Schools 

China offers a welcome to Christian education such as 
is met with in no other non-Christian nation. Communities 
ever}"where are calling and frequently in vain for Christian 
schools. The Chinese are ready to make liberal subscrip- 
tions for land and buildings. The missionary school has a 
wide prestige from the fact the missionary has aggressively 
pioneered many reform movements. Missionary schools 
were the first modern schools and are still the best. The 
missionary introduced Western medicine. He has intro- 
duced new trees and crops ; has been prominent in famine re- 
lief and in other ways has been the pioneer of Western cul- 
ture. All this has brought to Christian education an en- 
thusiastic welcome. The return by the United States to 
China of $50,000,000 after the Boxer indemnity was paid, 
and its use by China for educating leaders in the United 



CHINA 77 

States, has won for the American missionary school in 
China an increased regard. 

QPEISr-MlNDEDNESS OF EDUCATED CLASSES 

The receptiveness of the literati, or educated classes, is 
one of the outstanding features of the changed attitude of 
China. In 1896 John E. Mott called the literati of China 
''the Gibraltar of the non-Christian student world.'' A 
leading missionary to China stated that he would have felt 
well repaid if he could have been the means of the conver- 
sion of one of these officials or literati in his lifetime.^ A 
striking evidence of this new appro achability was furnished 
by the meetings for the educated classes conducted by Dr. 
John E. Mott and Sherwood Eddy in 1914 and by Mr. Eddy 
in 1915. In every center visited the largest halls available 
were filled with audiences drawn from the educated classes. 
The government and educational authorities in many cases 
gave their cordial support. Public buildings were given for 
the meetings and holidays declared in colleges in order that 
students might attend. In 1915 in twelve cities 121,000 of 
these officials, literati, and business men attended these evan- 
gelistic meetings, 12,000 of them signed Bible study pledges, 
and 7,000 are actually enrolled in Bible classes and making 
a sincere study of Christianity. 

Influence of Geaduates 

Christians occupy a place of influence in the new China 
out of all proportion to their numbers. Many of the lead- 
ers of the reform party at Nanking, Peking and in the prov- 
inces, including Sun Yat Sen, are products of mission 
schools. Two thirds of China 's first constitutional congress 
were graduates of mission schools. These fruits of Chris- 
tian education have vastly increased the favorable disposi- 
tion of the new China toward the missionary schools and 



^ Eddy, The New Era in Asia, p. 115, 



78 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

colleges. It should not escape our notice, in passing, what 
a remarkable tribute this prominence of mission school 
graduates is to the efficiency of education as a force for 
Christian influence. 

The Centenary Educational Peogkam 

primaey and secondary schools 

The Methodist Church is exclusively responsible for 
16,000,000 boys and girls of school age — a part of China's 
60,000,000 children who never receive a day's schooling. 
Methodism, according to Bishop Bashford, who has spent 
fourteen years in China, could plant primary schools for a 
million jDupils this year, in her own territory, if the teachers 
and means could be provided. Schools of all grades are 
crowded to the doors and hundreds of applicants are turned 
away annually. The survey of efficiency requirements for 
China calls for 328 primary schools, with enough missionary 
and native teachers to direct them. These primary schools 
are needed for a twofold purpose, as feeders to the higher 
schools and for creating universal literacy in the church. 
At present from one half to two thirds of the converts are 
illiterate. The same aims determine the need of secondary 
schools. The advance program calls for 21 secondary 
schools, designed especially for securing an educated mem- 
bership. The aim is to fit students for life as well as prepare 
them for higher schools; and agriculture, chicken-raising, 
weaving, silk culture, and mechanical training are taught. 

UNIVERSITIES 

Methodism has located, by a wise statesmanshii^, uni- 
versities in five strategic centers, with a system of tributary 
schools around each. In Peking, Chengtu, Nanking, and 
Foochow Methodism cooperates in union university centers. 
Xanchang is to be the denominational university center in 
the unmeasurably rich province of Kiangsi. This states- 
manlike cooperation in educational work in China is one of 



CHINA 79 

the finest fruits of Christianity on the mission field. It has 
added to the efficiency and prestige of Christianity and holds 
large promise for the future. At Peking the church is united 
with other missions, building on what was the former Meth- 
odist campus, a university in the national capital, the radiat- 
ing center of political life. There young men trained in a 
Christian university are put in the very center of the na- 
tion's life. At Foochow, the center of the largest Methodist 
constituency of China, the church is cooperating in another 
Union University with six denominations. At Nanking is 
located the third Union University. It is the ancient cap- 
ital and the center of the political and educational life of the 
lower Yangtze valley. Four other denominations cooperate 
with the Methodist Church. At Chengtu, the center of West 
China, is the West China Union University, a triumph of 
church federation, with seven denominations cooperating. 
A few years ago large plans were made for this university 
involving sixty buildings to be erected on the campus. To- 
day thirty of these buildings are either erected or are pro- 
vided for. 

The magnitude of this university task may be estimated 
from the fact that there are 1,000,000 teachers to be trained 
for China's 60,000,000 illiterate children. The high strat- 
egy of it may be seen in the fact that 80 per cent of students 
desiring education above high school must come to mission- 
ary institutions. The Christian Church is thus educating 
the men who in five to ten years will give direction to the 
government system of education. One of the largest fields 
of influence for these universities is that they set uip stand- 
ards of education which may become models for the gov- 
ernment school system which is at the present time taking 
definite shape. 

To put this educational undertaking on an efficient basis 
calls for 65 missionary teachers and 973 native teachers. 
For property and equipment, there will be needed in the next 
five years, in addition to present income, $1,879,007; for 
maintenance, $1,131,978; and for endowment, $1,806,667, 



80 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

making a total of $4,817,652. Plainly, this is a small price 
to pay for buying up an opportunity that will never come 
again. 

The Evangelistic Peogram 

*'What therefore God hath joined together, let not man 
put asunder.'^ Education and the direct proclamation of 
the gospel are parts of one Christian task in every land. In 
the evangelistic program are grouped the direct work of the 
church in preaching and social service. The call for advance 
is based on a thrilling history of evangelistic success and a 
marvelous opportunity. Three thousand native preachers 
and a membership and adherents totaling 75,000 make up 
a native church of genuine strength. The temper of the 
church may be seen in the 100 per cent increase of self-sup- 
port in ten years. The Centenary surveys for China call for 
a 300 per cent increase in giving on the field by the native 
church. 

The Methodist Church is exclusively responsible for 
eighty millions of people, a number four-fifths as large as 
the population of the United States. Every fact advanced 
about China in this chapter is an argument that this is the 
time of times to give to the native church of China a mo- 
mentum that will insure it a destiny of leadership. The 
loosened grip of ancient faiths on China, the receptivity of 
all classes, high and low, and the stirring of the national 
mind outlined above, make an opportunity for Christian 
evangelism hardly to be matched by any since the conversion 
of the peoples of northern Europe. 

The Centenary World Program plans the development 
of self-supporting and self -propagating churches until they 
are found everywhere. At present there are hundreds of 
thousands of villages and towns left to Methodism alone 
which are still without any regular Christian services. It 
will make possible a commanding work among educated 
classes in city centers, including the erection of worthy 
church buildings which will command the respect of both 



CHINA 81 

Christian and non-Christian and the securing of strategic 
sites while property is still cheap. It is planned to provide 
and equip Chinese pastors qualified to lead the influential 
classes and to hold for Christian life and service the pro- 
ducts of mission institutions. 

With great wisdom the evangelistic program calls for 
social service on a broad scale. There is both statesmanship 
and love in it. Social service is a direct application of the 
gospel and also a means of largest appeal to the Chinese. 
For the social message of Christianity is strikingly in accord 
with the best of Chinese tradition. 

When the missionary emphasizes medical work, famine 
relief, public health, and help for the unfortunate, he meets 
a hearty response in China, for the Confucian thought which 
has so controlled China through the ages has stressed hu- 
manitarian work. 

To carry through this program there will be needed 33 
new missionaries and 474 native workers. In property and 
equipment it calls for 9 institutional churches, 314 city and 
village churches and many missionary and native workers' 
residences ; an outlay over four years of about $1,500,000. 

• The Floweeing of a Centuey Plant 

The church must do no less. The present readiness of 
China is the divine flowering of a century plant, for the year 
1919 is the one hundredth anniversary of the translation of 
the Bible into Chinese by Robert Morrison, the first Protes- 
tant missionary. It was a tremendous task. Little wonder 
that after the task was done, Milne, Morrison's associate, 
cried out, ^ ^ To learn Chinese is a work for men with bodies 
of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel, 
eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and 
lives of Methuselah." That date of the translation of the 
Bible into Chinese is one of the great red-letter days in the 
history of China. Now that century plant is bursting in a 
gorgeous bloom. In the five years after the revolution there 



82 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

has been an increase in membershii) in the Christian Church 
in China of 25 per cent ! 

AYestern influence is breaking down superstition in 
China. Shall we put nothing else in its place? The science 
and learning and commerce and the vices of Western civili- 
zation are sweei^ing in pellmell. Shall we send nothing 
along to supplement and redeem? If we cast out the evil 
demon of superstition only to have the seven devils of com- 
mercialism, agnosticism, sensuality, and materialism take 
up their abode, surely the last state of China will be worse 
than the first. We play the part of destroyers if we break 
idols only to leave vacant shrines. China needs those idols 
replaced by a deeper reverence, a more satisfying faith, a 
nobler moral ideal. ''We who have sent through all the 
Eastern lands our food products, our textiles, our automo- 
biles, shall we also send our Bible? We who are breaking 
down family life and ancient forms of worship and long- 
established government, shall we also plant the faith in God 
the Father and in Jesus Christ ? " ^ 

The Medical Task 

A physician in the United States, hurrying to the house 
of a patient recently, was met by a friend who inquired 
where he was going. On being told the name of the patient 
the friend reassured him by saying the patient had a book 
on ' ' A^liat to Do Before the Doctor Comes. " " That is why 
I am hurrying," the physician replied. "I am afraid he 
will use it. ' ' 

That has been the climax of China's physical suffer- 
ing. She has been using her native text-book of old wives' 
fables in medicine to meet the great scourges with which 
the land is afflicted and has not only been i^owerless before 
them but even added to their toll of suffering and death. It 
has been like the fatal sickness of George Washington. 
The disease was bad enough, but he was making a brave 

^W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, p. 97. 



CHINA 



83 



struggle against it, when the doctor arrived with his stern 
cure which proved too much even for the iron constitution 
of the ^'Father of his Country." Chinese medicine, al- 




METHODIST HOSPITAL CENTERS IN CHINA 
The figures represent the number of persons for whom Methodism is responsible 

though possessing some value, is quite incapable of dealing 
with such diseases as diphtheria, cholera, and plague. The 
Chinese know practically nothing of surgery except as they 
learn it from Western schools. Only in certain centers have 
people awakened to questions of public sanitation ; cities the 



84 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

size of Boston draw water from polluted rivers and wells. 
Every city and village lias open sewers. Out of ten chil- 
dren born in the United States three, normally the weakest 
three, will fail to grow up. Out of ten children born in 
China, these weakest three and probably five more besides 
will die. The present death rate in China is from 50 to 55 
per 1,000. In the State of New York it is 15 per 1,000; in 
modernized Japan, 20 per 1,000. In North America there 
is one doctor to every 625 people; in China one to every 
2,500,000. 

Methodism in China has 11 hospitals, 2 dispensaries, 
and 16 physicians. They have performed a service vastly out 
of proportion to their numbers. Native women physicians 
at the head of Methodist hospitals, such as Dr. Mary Stone 
and Dr. Ida Kahn, graduates of American medical schools, 
and brilliant physicians and surgeons, are among the bright- 
est trophies ever won by Christian missions in any land at 
any time. At Dr. Mary Stone's Hospital in 1915, 10,000 new 
patients were treated, 13,000 return visits and 1,000 patients 
eared for in the hospital, making a total in round numbers 
of 25,000 persons reached by Dr. Stone's work. In the 
survey of needs the responsibility of Methodism has been 
figured out carefully on the basis of figures submitted by 
physicians in charge of hospitals on the fields. At Peking 
the measure of responsibility for the Methodist hospital is 
14,000,000 people. In Chengtu in West China it is 2,500,- 
000. For that need there is one doctor. Thirty-five million 
people for whom the church is responsible have 11 hospitals 
and 24 physicians ! One of the saddest facts is that 40 per 
cent of the Methodist hospitals in China are closed, because 
there is no staff to care for them. Most of the hospitals are 
manned with one physician and when he leaves, for illness, 
or any cause, there is no one to take his place. 

There is imperative need for equipping existing hos- 
pitals with sufficient nurses, physicians, and surgeons. On 
the lowest estimate 25 missionary doctors, and 101 native 
doctors and assistants are needed. Two new hospitals and 



CHINA 85 

13 dispensaries must be provided. The total asking for 
this medical work is $1,087,345. This much must be invested 
to meet the church's share in the great cooperative medical 
work in which it is engaged, and which the China Medical 
Board is aiding in a broad-visioned, generous way. 

The Prize 

These are days of revolution and somersault. Deeper 
than that they are days of grace. For there has appeared 
to the sober, conservative, and restrained minds of Chris- 
tian leaders at the heart of the whirlpool the real possibility 
that if the Church of Christ will open its eyes and see and act 
swiftly and grandly, the next generation will find China a 
Christian republic. 



IJntil India is leavened with Christianity she will be unfit for 
freedom. — Si?- H. B. Edwards. 

Rapid as India's progress has been in some respects, the essential 
fact is that the great mass of her people are at this moment given over 
to beliefs, prejudices, and habits a thousand years behind those of the 
races who live efficiently in the real world. A country which has 
lain for twenty or thirty centuries' under the maleficent spell of caste, 
fetishism, cow-and-Brahman worship and an almost equally enervating 
metaphysics, cannot all of a sudden wake up, rub its eyes and claim 
to be a civilized nation. There is now every likelihood of a great and 
fairly rapid change in the mental condition of the masses, and until 
that change has had time to make itself felt it would be madness for 
India to attempt to stand alone. — William Archer, "India and the 
Future." 

We are watching to-day a great and stupendous process, the recon- 
struction of a decomposed society, parallel to the movement in Europe 
in the fifth century. . . . Stupendous, indeed, and to guide that transi- 
tion with sympathy, wisdom, and courage may well be called a glorious 
mission. — Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India, 1905-1910. 



CHAPTEE IV 
THE LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK IN INDIA 

^^What picture comes to your mind when you think of 
India 1 ' ' was asked of a company of people recently. 

i i rpj^g rp^j ]y[ahal, ' ' answered one traveler, as the mem- 
ory of that glittering gem of architecture came to mind. 

^ ' The Road to Mandalay, ' ' replied another, recalling the 
glamour of Kipling's India. 

^'When I think of India," said a third, ^^I always think 
of the picture of a man sitting on a bed of spikes. ' ' 

^^ India always suggests to me," said a fourth, ^'the 
pictures of famine sufferers which were so familiar years 
ago, more like living skeletons than men. ' ' 

It is the mingling of these true pictures of different as- 
pects of India that makes it such a ' ' buzzing, blooming blur ' ' 
to the Western mind. 

The New Dream 

The dominating fact in the life of India to-day, per- 
vading the bewildering maze of its congress of races and 
languages, castes and religions, is the throbbing of a new na- 
tional consciousness. This spirit of nationalism finds ex- 
pression in the political field as a movement toward national 
unity and an aspiration for a larger measure of democracy 
and self-government. In the social life it is a striving to 
break the fetters of caste and other curses of the most en- 
slaving social order ever devised. In the religious life that 
same ferment of freedom finds its most striking expression 
in the mass movement toward Christianity among the lowest 
classes. 

The presence of the picturesque and doughty fighters 

89 



90 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

from India in the battle line of democracy in France and 
Egypt, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia is the outward and 
visible sign of an inward sympathy with the cause. And the 
very participation of India in the war is hastening the move- 
ment toward unity and quickening the other forces which are 
transforming her life. India no longer sits aloof from the 
commotion of the Western world in inward contemplation, 
as in other days when 

'"She let the legions thunder past 
And plunged in thought again." 

The thundering legions of this war will indeed leave India 
plunged in thought, but she is thinking in tune "with the rest 
of the world, thinking of freedom and enlightenment and 
progress. 

Will the Deeam Come Tele ? 

This birth of the new national consciousness of India 
greatly multiplies its appeal to the Church of Christ. It had 
an already great appeal as the most religious of all coun- 
tries, the one most cursed by its religion, and the neediest 
and most poverty-stricken of all lands. But as India has 
awakened to a new feeling of unity and a striving for free- 
dom she presents to the Christian Church both an increased 
need and- opi^ortunity. If her dream of a larger measure of 
self-government is to be realized in a safe and beneficent 
manner, she must be fitted for it by the enlightening and 
uplifting forces of the gospel of Christ. There is no reason 
to doubt that Great Britain will admit India to the self- 
government enjoyed by her other dominions, such as Canada 
and Australia, when she is fitted for it.^ But beyond the 
need of India for the gospel in order to make democracy 
safe there lies the need of that larger freedom in the Chris- 



' A new home-rule plan of government which has for its purpose eventu- 
ally to set up in India a responsible self-government has been prepared 
for submission to the British Parliament by the Secretary of State for 
India, E. S. Montague, and the Viceroy, Baron Chelmsford (July, 1918). 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 91 

tian sense, of which political self-government is only one 
incidental expression. It is the liberation and strengthening 
of the soul, which frees from the power of sin and selfish- 
nesSj from the bondage of superstition and custom and sets 
men at liberty to serve God and their fellow men. Without 
this deeper spiritual freedom, which is the gift of Christ, 
self-government is a hollow gain, a prize which cannot be 
fully used and which is easily lost. 

Days or Ferment 

The stirring of these new desires and aspirations fur- 
nishes an unprecedented opportunity for Christian leader- 
ship. The leaven of freedom which is the result of mission- 
ary influence, British government and Western contacts, is. 
at work with astounding results. Christianity has that for 
which India is seeking. If in these fermenting and creative 
days, when the national life is being stirred and millions 
are moving toward Christianity, the church shall widen its 
endeavor and furnish an adequate leadership, the process of 
the Christianization of India will go forward with a mo- 
mentum of which no one dared to dream a generation ago. 

*^The Land of Desiee" ' 

Since the dawn of history India has been ^^a land of 
desire" to all nations on account of its untold wealth and 
strategic location. Recall for a moment some of the amaz- 
ing proportions and characteristics of India. 

While it embraces only one fifteenth of the world's 
area, it contains one fifth of the population of the globe, 
about 315,000,000. With an area a little less than one half 
that of the United States, including Alaska, it has three 
times the population. It has more races than in all Europe 
and 147 languages. Its population is composed of 217,000,- 
000 Hindus, 66,000,000 Mohammedans, 10,000,000 Buddhists, 
10,000,000 animists, 4,000,000 Christians, and about 6,000,000 



92 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

others. Its Mohammedan population of 66,000,000 makes it 
the largest Mohammedan country in the world. 

Out of a population of 315,000,000, 280,000,000 live in 
villages. It is estimated that there are over 730,000 villages 
in India. In the vivid picturing of Bishop Warne, ^'If 
Christ had started on the day of his baptism to preach in the 
villages of India, visiting one village each day, he would 
still have 30,000 villages to visit. ' ' In other words, he would 
not complete the trip until the year 2000. 

It is a land of bewildering contrasts. Its climate ranges 
all the way from that of ^^Greenland's icy mountains to 
India's coral strands." It possesses unrivaled natural 
beauty and some of the most artistic buildings ever created 
by the hand of man, such as the Taj Mahal, side by side with 
ugliness and filth beyond description. A land of amazing 
wealth, it has a depth of squalor and poverty not to be 
matched on earth. Justly famous for its scholars and 
learned pundits, eighty-nine per cent of its men and ninety- 
nine per cent of its women are unable even to read or write. 
Possessed of a profound religious philosophy and literature, 
the most instinctively religious people on earth, its life is 
fettered with bonds of fhe grossest superstition and an op- 
pressive social system. 

If India has ever been a ''land of desire" to human 
monarchs, how much more, with its deep religious nature 
and its teeming, needy millions, must it be a ''land of de- 
sire" to Christ! 

Signs of the New Day 

Let us glance swiftly at some of the manifestations of 
the awakening in India. 

'Natioi^aiasm. 

The Russo-Japanese war was an alarm clock which 
tingled throughout the whole of Asia. The spectacle of an 
Oriental nation matching its strength successfully with a 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 93 

great European power caused a restlessness throughout 
India, a consciousness of herself as a nation and an aspira- 
tion that India as a people should take a share among the 
nations and act her part in the great world drama. The 
American occupation of the Philippines, with the educa- 
tional and political progress which has resulted, has fostered 
new national desires. The participation of India in the 
world war has brought national patriotism to large sections 
of Indian society and strengthened the feeling of sympathy 
and unity among the native states. The meeting of the India 
National Congress in 1916, in which Mohammedans as well 
as Hindus participated, appeared as a body more fully 
representing the whole population than ever before. That 
body drafted a joint Hindu-Moslem program of reforms 
which was presented to the viceroy and secretary of state, 
an action which evidences that representatives of the masses 
now think very much alike on the essentials of India's na- 
tional needs and national rights. 

It must be remembered that this new spirit of national- 
ism is not a movement to break away from the control of 
Great Britain. That fact is abundantly demonstrated by the 
enthusiastic loyalty of India during the war. Notwithstand- 
ing the fact that the Sultan of Turkey declared a holy war, 
the Mohammedan population of India, of 66,000,000, has 
stood loyal to England. The nationalist movement in India, 
except for small and misguided parts, concedes that the gov- 
ernment of India shall remain responsible to the British 
government and Parliament in the matter of foreign rela- 
tions, Indian defense, and affairs of the native states. In 
other matters the desire is for home rule like that of other 
British dominions. 

Christianity and the National Aspiration 

The point of contact between Christianity and this na- 
tional aspiration is clear. It is not the purpose of Christian 
missions to establish any particular form of government, not 



94 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

even democratic government. That tlie longing for self-ex- 
pression and development follows in the wake of Christian 
teaching is not due to any political propaganda or meddling 
on the part of the missionary, but to the inherent quality 
of the Christian evangel as a message of the worth and pos- 
sibility of every man. 

The British Government has freely and fully recognized 
the part which Christian missions have plaj^ed in the loyalty 
of India in the present crisis. Missionaries, at the request 
of the government, have gone with native troops to Europe 
and by their service have greatly increased their effective- 
ness. The business of Christianity in India to-day is not the 
minor one of securing new political forms, but, in view of the 
movement toward larger self-government, to quicken the 
spiritual forces which are the soul of liberty and progress. 

Economic Advance 

The busy whirl of factory wheels is mingling to-day 
with the sound of the temple bells. An industrial revolution 
is in process and factories and industries have grown enor- 
mously. In a land which from time immemorial has been 
almost entirely agricultural, over 35,000,000 people are de- 
pendent on industrial occupations for a living. It is a sur- 
prise to most people to realize that India stands second to 
the United States in railway mileage, with over 32,000 miles. 
The produce of the world is carried in sacks of Indian jute. 
She is second only to the United States in the i^roduction of 
cotton, being responsible for one sixth of the world's output. 
The iron and steel industry is just at its beginning, but al- 
ready large steel plants are making rails and girders and, at 
the present time, shells for the Allies. In agriculture, large 
irrigation projects and canal systems with 50,000 miles of 
canals are in operation which have redeemed over 20,000,- 
000 acres of waste land. Recently India exported more 
wheat to Great Britain than any other country with an aver- 
age yield of only six bushels to the acre. With improved 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 95 

methods of cultivation and increase of acreage due to irri- 
gation, this yield per acre will undoubtedly be increased six- 
fold. 

Educational Activity 

India 's coining of age is indicated by the passing of the 
old era of almost unbroken ignorance and superstition and 
the organization of a new system of Western education and 
knowledge. It is a movement which extends through all the 
great divisions of the population. Hindus, Mohammedans, 
Christians, and the government are all holding educational 
congresses, establishing schools, and projecting universities. 
A new recognition of the lack of education and its fatal 
handicap to national progress has developed, and the un- 
usual thing about this educational effort is that a part of it 
concerns women. An uneducated womanhood has had the 
sanction of religion in India and still has, but in spite of that, 
schools for girls and even for Hindu widows are springing 
up in progressive communities. A Hindu Woman's Uni- 
versity is being planned. It is a colossal task — educating a 
fifth of the human race. A new impetus is felt in the field of 
primary education, India's greatest educational need. The 
higher universities are far better developed than elementary 
schools. With three times the population of the United 
States India has only two fifths as many pupils in school. 
Of her 315,000,000 people over 288,000,000 are unable to read 
or write. This new educational interest and conscience is a 
remarkable tribute to the work of Christian educators in 
India during the last half century and also a remarkable 
opportunity for Christian education to-day. 

A New Conscience 

A new conscience is an unmistakable and gratifying ex- 
pression of the national awakening in India. An active 
spirit of social reform is abroad in the land which is waging 
a spirited attack on the prime curse of India, the caste sys- 
tem, and on other social blights. Sometimes these move- 



96 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

ments and tlie associations which promote them are strongly 
anti-Christian, but Christian example and influence have 
been unmistakable in their growth. The caste system, which 
separates the population into different classes with unpass- 
able boundaries, is being dealt some hard blows by Western 
institutions which force intermingling, such as the railroad, 
and by associations which defy the prohibitions of caste. 
Public dinners at which members of many different castes, 
from the highest, the Brahmans, to the lowest, the outcastes, 
sat down together, have thrown down the gantlet to the caste 
authorities. The war is loosening the hold of caste restric- 
tions. Over 300,000 troops have crossed the sea from India 
and by doing so have broken caste. It is impossible to think 
that these men will be despised as outcastes on their re- 
turn. On the contrary, they will be hailed as heroes and the 
whole caste system will receive a severe jolt. 

Reform associations for attacking many of the great 
social curses of India have been formed among the Hindus, 
and others of the population, as well as among Christians. 
A Hindu Marriage Reform League with ninety-eight 
branches is combating the evils of child-marriage and seek- 
ing to raise the age of marriage. Agitation to make possible 
and common the remarriage of widows, and to abolish the se- 
clusion of women in the Purdah is being carried on by many 
associations. The task to which the reformers have set 
themselves is, of course, enormous, and progress is neces- 
sarily slow. But the significant thing is not the actual suc- 
cess thus far achieved, but the fact that India is awakening. 

Religious Unrest 

India is the greatest arena of religions in the world. It 
has given two great religions to the world, Buddhism and 
Hinduism, which have vitally affected every individual in 
Asia. It is the greatest world center of Mohammedanism 
and Hinduism. With its intense religious interest, India is 
marked by deep unrest in the religious as well as in the social 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 97 

life. The most remarkable sign of that unrest is the mass 
movement toward Christianity now going on among the low- 
est classes. This will be discussed later. The religious un- 
rest and transformation, however, are widespread through- 
out all classes. The old pantheistic and polytheistic order is 
breaking up and the reconstruction in many quarters of the 
belief in one Grod is indication that India is beginning to rise 
to grasp the conception of the Fatherhood of God. 

We cannot study the census figures without realizing 
that there is a great spiritual awakening going on. While 
the Buddhists have increased in ten years only about eleven 
per cent, the Mohammedans six per cent, the Hindus only 
four per cent, Protestant Indian Christians increased forty- 
eight per cent, and they are coming forward at that rate 
every decade. Their rate of increase is seven times as fast 
as that of the population, and twelve times as fast as that of 
the Hindus; so that, even at the present rate of increase, 
India would be a Christian country in one hundred and fifty 
years, which would be a shorter time than it took to convert 
the Roman empire. But the very rate of increase is gaining, 
and when once the system of caste breaks, a great flood-tide 
will flow into the Christian Church.^ 

The Old Needs 

Significant and hopeful as these proofs of awakening 
are, the dream of a new India will be futile without Chris- 
tianity. The old evils and the old bondage still abide in 
their intensity and make up a sum of misery beyond our 
power to compute. The religions of India have forged on it 
a social system which is the most unmitigated curse a land 
has ever known. The caste system has held the people in a 
vise for twenty-five centuries and still has its deadening grip 
upon them. It is the world's arch enemy of democracy and 



' Sherwood Eddy, in Students and the World-Wide Expansion of Chris- 
tianity, p. 287. 



98 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

a true democracy in India can rise only when it is broken. 
There are upward of 19,000 castes and sub-castes, most of 
them belonging to the three great groups known as 
Brahmans, sudras and outcastes. Individuals belonging to 
the outcastes are considered so impure in nature that to 
touch them brings defilement, hence their common name — 
''the untouchables.'' The higher castes, though somewhat 
tolerant of each other, must not dine together nor inter- 
marry, on pain of a social persecution which to most peo- 
ple is intolerable. Did any land ever present such crying 
need for the Christian revelation of the Brotherhood of 
Man! 

''One Long Ckime Against Womanhood'' 

Asia has been well called "one long crime against 
womanhood," and the crime is intensified in India. Child- 
marriage still lays its blight on the physical, mental, and 
spiritual life of the land. There are over 300,000 wives in 
India under six years of age and over 22,000,000 between fiye 
and ten. Most girls are taken from school to be married at 
ten and receive no more education, if, indeed, they have 
received any at all up to that time. The suffering caused 
by the oppression of ividows still continues. There are 
23,000,000 widows in India of whom 112,000 are under ten 
years of age. Hindu custom absolutely forbids the remar- 
riage of widows, and they are condemned to a life of drudg- 
ery and disgrace. The lot of a widow in India is so hard 
that the number of suicides among them is large and often it 
is hardly to be preferred to the old fate which awaited the 
widow, that of being burned on her husband's funeral pyre. 
The 7ieed of education cannot be pictured strongly enough. 
In spite of the new interest in education, and in spite of the 
175,000 schools in India, only one quarter of the boys and 
one twentieth of the girls are receiving any instruction. 
Professor D. J. Fleming has made statistics tell a graphic 
story in his statement that while there are enough females in 
India to replace every man, woman, and child in North and 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 99 

South America, yet all who could read or write among them 
could reside comfortably in Philadelphia.^ 

Extreme poverty must be kept as the background of 
every mental picture we form of India. Lord Cromer of 
Egypt estimated the average income per capita in India as 
nine dollars. Lord Curzon boasted that during his admin- 
istration as viceroy the income of the agriculturists had been 
raised from six dollars to seven dollars a year. Forty mil- 
lions of people go to bed hungry every night; and they lie 
down on a mud floor to sleep. 

The spiritual need is the one that touches and under- 
lies all others. This great country of 300,000,000 people, the 
dominating trait of whose history through all the ages has 
been the search for God, is still without him as he has shown 
his fullness in Christ. The weary and yet eager search goes 
on. Surely, those who are trustees of the news of God in 
Jesus Christ cannot withhold it at this crucial hour of 
India 's search. 

The Christian Opportunity 

The most arresting feature of the Christian opportunity 
to-day is 

The Mass Movement 

It is no exaggeration to say that the present mass move- 
ment toward Christianity now going on among the lowest 
classes in India, a movement as a body in groups, villages, 
and castes, is the greatest since the Christian Church was 
founded. It is the dominating fact in the missionary situa- 
tion in India. It is a movement of great waves. The Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church alone baptized 40,000 in 1915, and 
is at present baptizing 2,000 a week. Last year 150,000 
were refused baptism for lack of Christian teachers. Back 
of them are 6,000,000 calling for instruction and baptism and 
back of them 50,000,000 available to Christianity. 

It might be more properly called a caste or class move- 

^ World Outlook, August, 1917. 



100 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

ment than a mass movement, for the explanation of the 
movement is found in the caste system which binds the peo- 
ple of India together in an intricate social network. India 




WHERE THE MILLIONS ARE MOVING TOWARD CHRISTIANITY 

Map of India showing the geographical and numerical extent of Mass Movements. 
A million outcastes a year might be baptized if facilities for shepherding and instruction were 
provided. 

has acquired the habit of moving along caste lines, for the 
members of a caste are so enmeshed in common prohibitions 
that if they move at all they must move together. Hinduism 
is built in layers or castes, piled one upon another into the 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 101 

thousands. There are three great divisions of these castes — 
Brahmans, numbering 15,000,000; the middle castes, 142,- 
000,000 ; and the low castes or outcastes, 50,000,000, or one 
sixth of the total population. It is among these outcastes 
that the mass movement is taking place. 

The Outcastes 

These outcastes are so low in the scale of life that they 
have to *^ reach up to touch bottom." They are depressed 
classes outside the pale of Hinduism, sunk in abject ignor- 
ance and squalor. It is common for them to live on one meal 
of grain a day, and a frugal meal at that. The daily wage 
of the members of the Methodist Church who have come in 
through the mass movement averages three cents. A mis- 
sionary has described how he has seen a man come home 
late at night to a family of five persons with a smile of tri- 
umph at his success, while all that he had brought was a 
mess of millet gruel in a filthy pot, about the equivalent of 
the porridge which two American children take for break- 
fast, and that was the sole nourishment for five persons for 
twenty-four hours.^ 

In addition to this poverty the outcastes labor under a 
pitiless social oppression. Hindu society regards them as 
so unclean that even their shadow pollutes. While under 
British rule they enjoy equal rights with other members of 
the population, social custom compels them to live apart, 
often excluding them from the use of the village well and 
public roads and bridges. 

The Devil's Mastekpieoe 

Caste has well been called ^'the deviPs masterpiece." 
No system ever devised on earth has ever been so powerful 
an instrument in holding great masses of people under the 
dead hand of enslaving tradition. Each of these castes 

* J. H. Oldham, The World and the Gospel, p. 96. 



102 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

retains something of the guild or craft idea, and its mem- 
bers are for the most part engaged in similar trades. There 
is a caste of weavers, leather workers, goldsmiths, etc. Un- 
like the social divisions of any other lands, these caste lines 
are rigid. No possession of talent or intelligence or wealth 
avails to lift a man out of his caste. The caste system is 
well compared to a long line of people ascending a ladder, 
where the proper procedure is to kiss the feet of the one 
above and kick the face of the one beneath. 

Throughout all missionary endeavor in India caste has 
been an almost insuperable obstacle. But the astonishing 
thing disclosed by the mass movement is that while the great 
social network of caste has been powerful to hold men down 
together, it is also powerful to lift them up together. This 
demonstration is changing the strategy of the Christian 
effort of India and is filling the future with new and en- 
larged hope. It is like the movement of a glacier. It is next 
to impossible to budge any part of it, but once the foundation 
of the whole is loosened and the whole mass starts to move 
together, it is irresistible. To win individuals out of a caste, 
in the face of tLe terrible economic and social persecution 
which awaits them, has been exceedingly hard and slow work. 
•But when a whole village or a large part of a caste gets a 
vision of the religious and social advantages which Chris- 
tianity offers and becomes Christian in solid group, it can 
change the social customs under which it lives to a large 
extent. This, in brief, is what is happening among the out- 
castes of India and is the underlying explanation of the mass 
movement, in distinction from the older form of missionary 
success in winning individuals by twos and threes or by 
families. 

Pentecost— A. D. To-day 

The Pentecost in which the expansion of Christianity 
began, as recorded in the second chapter of the book of 
Acts, was marked by the baptism of 3,000 people. In the 
1918th chapter of the book of Acts, now being written, there 



LEAVEN OF FEEEDOM AT WORK 103 

is a Pentecost every two weeks in India, over 3,000 people 
being baptized every two weeks. It has not been a spon- 
taneous movement springing suddenly from the ground. It 
has been going on for twenty-five years, but with increased 
momentum the last ten years. It spreads through villages 
and through castes, such as the large Chamar, or leather 
workers ' caste, and the Sweeper caste, whose combined mem- 
bership is about 13,000,000, and among which there are large 
movements toward Christianity at present. 

Work among a caste is begun by missionaries and pro- 
ceeds slowly. Then when the knowledge of Christian teach- 
ing spreads, the village or district group, usually under 
the leadership of the head man or mayor, decides to become 
Christian in a body and asks for instruction and baptism. 
These village leaders have been made an important factor 
in the mass movement. Special effort has been made to win 
them on account of their ability and recognized leadership, 
and thousands of these village leaders, or chaudrisj as they 
are called, have become voluntary, unpaid Christian leaders 
and have had large success in bringing their whole village 
to the decision to accept Christianity. Thus the movement 
is seizing on the already established leadership of the de- 
pressed peoples and making it a force in the native Christian 
church. 

The Social Gospel iisr Action 

The mass movement is a social as well as a religious 
movement. It is not to be denied that millions are turning to 
Christianity for freedom from social and economic bondage 
as well as for spiritual light. It is one of the greatest demo- 
cratic movements in history. Does that social character of 
the movement discount it as a Christian evangelistic success ! 
If anyone thinks so, let him read his New Testament over 
again. It is the response of the oppressed and downtrodden 
to Christ, the great Democrat, who came ''to preach good 
tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and 
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 



104 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

are bruised.'^ The desire for social betterment among the 
outcastes is the natural response to the great invitation of 
Christ, '^Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." You can no more set the 
great truths of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 
of man free among the oppressed peoples of the earth with- 
out starting a social upheaval than you can drop dynamite 
bombs from the sky without causing an explosion. In the 
work of Christian missions among the depressed classes of 
India there is a striking demonstration of the social value of 
the teaching of Christ. The Christian community which has 
come from the outcastes has shown great material, intellect- 
ual, and moral progress. The whole standard of life has 
been raised ; degrading habits and practices have been aban- 
doned ; a new idea of the worth of human life has followed 
the Christian teaching of the value of every human soul. 

Are They Worth Lifting? 

Physically, these outcaste peoples are the best in India. 
They have the vigorous physique of outdoor laborers, and 
the children are healthy and robust. They have a mental 
caliber that compares favorably with that of classes higher 
in the social scale. Many of them, when highly educated, 
have become the ablest leaders of the country. With the 
advantages which higher castes enjoy they would not be 
inferior in any degree. 

Their spiritual capacity and loyalty under persecution 
has been amply demonstrated. Many of them have with- 
stood a persecution which has a bitterness and sharp edge 
inconceivable to the inhabitant of the United States. Let us 
try to put ourselves in their places. Think what it would 
mean for us to be refused work, or made to work and then 
refused any pay ; to have our water supply cut off under a 
scorching heat, to be put out of the houses in which our 
families have lived for generations and to be denied all share 
in the common life of our towns. Yet these are the persecu- 



LEAVEN OF FEEEDOM AT WORK 105 

tions which thousands of these ^^untouchables'' have loyally 
endured. Voluntary Christian service and generous giving 
out of an abysmal poverty have further proved the quality 
of the converts. 

The Embarrassment or Answered Prayer 

For half a century the church has been praying that 
people might be moved, and now that the prayer is being so 
tumultuously answered, the church is embarrassed by the 
calls that are put upon if. The evangelistic resources of the 
church are overwhelmed. At the present time 200,000 peo- 
ple in the mass movement areas are awaiting baptism in the 
Methodist Church. For a dozen years or so the church has 
been ^^ standing like a policeman holding back the people 
that wanted to come into the church of Jesus Christ. ' ' ^ A 
novel commentary, surely, on the text: ^^ Whosoever will, let 
him come ! '' A million a year might be baptized if pastoral 
care and teaching could be provided. 

Possibilities 

We cannot soberly think of the possibilities of the mass 
movement without constructing what must seem like a Chris- 
tian Arabian Nights. Eemember that the Hindu caste sys- 
tem is like a pyramid which rests heavily on the outcastes as 
a base. Let the base be undermined and the pyramid will 
begin to fall. Already experience has shown that wherever 
the work among the depressed classes has been most suc- 
cessful, there the upper castes have been most ready to hear 
and accept the message of the gospel. Thus it is shown that 
work among the depressed classes at present will prove the 
most successful way of opening a wide door to the middle 
and upper castes. For a little above these 50,000,000 out- 
castes are 142,000,000 of the middle castes, the backbone of 
Indian society; and above these the higher Brahman castes. 

^Bishop C. D. Foss. 



106 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Indications are already at hand that these caste or mass 
movements will spread upward. 

Meeting the Oppoktunity 

In view of the fact that the missionaries are unable to 
care for the thousands who come in the mass movement, the 
missionaries are frequently advised to stop it. No one can 
stop it! As soon try to stop Niagara Falls by laying a few 
logs across the top ! Forces have been set in motion which 
are impelling vast multitudes toward Christianity. There 
are only three alternatives before the church. One is to 
refuse to receive them and drive them into a permanent and 
bitter hostility to Christianity, as well as keep them in piti- 
ful need. The second is to baptize them without the neces- 
sary training. The third is to furnish the teachers and 
pastors necessary to build them up into a strong intelligent 
church. 

The Dangeks or the Movement 

If these peoples are refused baptism for a long time, 
they turn away and often become implacable enemies of 
Christianity. In all cases it is much harder to win them 
back. 

Other religions are seeking the outcastes and will re- 
ceive them unless Christianity speedily opens the door. The 
reformdng cult of Hinduism is eagerly seeking to keep the 
untouchables from Christianity. Even more formidable is 
the Mohammedan, with his incessant appeal to the depressed 
classes by an offer of brotherhood. The masses in many 
sections of India hesitate between Mohammed and Christ. 
Once lost to Christianity they will be difficult, if not im- 
possible, to recover. 

The alternative of bringing multitudes into the Chris- 
tian Church without sufficient training is even more danger- 
ous. Under such a process the church would soon lose its 
Christian distinctiveness and be submerged into the sur- 



LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 107 

rounding Hinduism. Such, tragedies have often happened 
in Christian history, notably in North Africa and Syria, and 
there is a very real crisis on in that respect in India to-day. 
' 'If the salt has lost its savor, it is good for nothing but to be 
cast out. ' ' If the church is swamped with uninstructed ad- 
herents and becomes a mixture of Christianity and Hindu- 
ism, it will be powerless to save India. 

The Call of the Hour 

The Centenary program is leading the Methodist 
Church along the only safe path in this crucial opportunity. 
It seeks to provide the facilities for shepherding these people 
who are thrusting themselves against the church doors and 
educating them, particularly the children. This will re- 
quire large additions to the force of missionaries and to the 
force of teachers, provisions for training teachers, and to the 
number of village and rural schools. At least 1,300 rural 
teachers and 400 village and rural schools are called for in 
the program. There are 60,000 Methodist boys and girls 
who are entirely without schools, four fifths of the total 
number of Methodist children. This number increases at 
the rate of 5,000 a year. Unless this situation is corrected 
the church is in great danger of being half heathenized in a 
few years. 

In addition to providing education for the illiterate and 
neglected children of the mass movement areas, a large in- 
crease in the evangelistic forces, both foreign and native, is 
required for the large and increasing task of training the 
converts coming at the rate of 40,000 or 50,000 a year. 
About 275 additional rural chapels, with 75 missionaries and 
over 1,000 native workers, are called for as a minimum. 
Every estimate of forces needed seems small when we re- 
member that Methodism's share of India's population for 
which she is responsible is 54,000,000 and of the 50,000,000 
of the depressed classes among which the mass movement is 
going on, it is responsible for 6,000,000. 



108 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

The Educationai. Program 

Christianity in every land must conquer at the top as 
well as at the bottom. It has always done so. While it is 
true that in the early days of the church ^^not many wise, not 
many noble" were called, it is also true that the most signal 
successes of Christianity have been won under the leadership 
of highly trained men such as Paul and Augustine. It was 
so in the days of Luther and Wesley. It will be so in India. 
In the intellectual and religious unrest among the student 
class of India to-day there is a real opportunity. There is a 
wide restlessness and ferment among the higher castes and 
educated classes which makes for a new accessibility to 
Christianity. In the words of J. H. Oldham, ^^the new 
knowledge has kindled new desires, created new demands, 
and set new dreams coursing through men's brains. 
Western knowledge is slowly but surely undermining the 
whole fabric of Hinduism. ' ' ^ Caste is being discovered as 
an institution which thwarts the national unity which India 
desires. The worship of Hindu deities and the priestly cere- 
monies of the Brahmans are things in which an educated 
man can no longer believe. The awakened national con- 
sciousness has led to a vigorous revival of all things Indian, 
religion as well as literature and art, but that has been ac- 
companied by **a continuous and steadily increasing inner 
decay. ' ' ^ The Hindu system is threatened with inward col- 
lapse. 

For such a time as this a strong type of educated Chris- 
tian leadership is needed. Existing Christian colleges must 
be strengthened and endowment provided sufficient to insure 
an efficient staff, necessary new buildings and adequate 
equipment. The government schools cannot supply Chris- 
tian leaders. They are anti-Christian in sentiment and en- 
tirely secular in character. The government contributes 
liberally to the cost of mission schools and colleges, provided 

^ The World and the Gospel, p. 100. 

* J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, p. 431. 



LEAVEN OF FEEEDOM AT WOEK 109 

they are well equipped and maintain high standards. The 
higher educational institutions of the Methodist Church, 
three colleges and 28 high schools, afford an opportunity to 
reach the upper class of Hindu and Moslem youth. Over 
40,000 students are already enrolled in a well related system 
of education through kindergarten to university. 

Christian Literature 

Let no one think that because the percentage of illiter- 
acy is so high in India there is little place for Christian lit- 
erature. The printing press is already a power in the land 
through its influence with those who do read ; and the educa- 
tional awakening is bringing the press to a position of domi- 
nating influence. The educated classes of the population are 
great readers. The social and educational advance vastly 
increases the need of endowed Christian presses which can 
produce Christian literature of a high type in large quan- 
tities. A new interpretation of Christianity must be made 
and circulated to meet the new spirit of sympathetic inquiry 
now abroad. In addition to this fertile field for literary 
evangelism, the rapidly expanding Christian community de- 
mands an adequate literature in its own languages. 

The two presses of the Methodist Church, one at Luck- 
now and one at Madras, have had a remarkable record of 
service. A permanent fund for publishing Christian liter- 
ature is needed and the Centenary program for India in- 
cludes such a fund. 

The Eomance of Providence 

There has been the romance of Providence over the 
whole Christian enterprise in India. Great names spangle 
the sky like stars, such as those of Carey and Alexander 
Duff. It contains the largest Christian community in any 
mission field. There has been a strange romance in the his- 
tory of Methodism in India — a history in which great names 



110 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

gleam forth: William Butler, William Taylor, James M. 
Thoburn, and Isabella Thoburn. William Butler landed in 
India in 1857, barely sixty years ago, as the first Methodist 
missionary. It took long, painful years to collect a few 
dozen converts. James M. Thoburn had one baptism to 
show for his first year's labor, and at the close of the second 
year had won only six converts. To-day there is a mem- 
bership of the Methodist Church in India of over 335,000 
members, with the rate of increase rising each year. 

Christ and the Mh^lions 

But not merely in terms of opportunity, great as it 
may be, and certainly not in any columns of figures can the 
appeal of India be put. Its deepest appeal is to the heart ; 
the appeal of ^'the great burning heart of Asia" that for 
ages has cried out for the living God and been baffled in its 
search ; the appeal of toiling, suffering, hungry millions ; 
the appeal of millions of wronged children and defrauded 
and depressed women. 

We return to the question with which we started, ''What 
do you think of when you think of India?'' The question 
was suddenly put to a native Christian woman, for years a 
teacher in a woman's Christian college. Her eyes glistened 
as she made her answer: 

''I think of Christ/' 



Africa has suffered many wrongs in the past at the hands of the 
stronger nations of Christendom, and she is suffering wrongs at their 
hands to-day; but the greatest wrong, and that from which she is suffer- 
ing most, is being inflicted by the Church of Christ. It consists in with- 
holding from so many of her children the knowledge of Christ. — Re- 
ports of World's Missionary Conference, Edinburgh. 

The problem with which we are confronted in Africa is one of the 
great issues of history. Have we eyes to see its immense significance? 
Shall the African races be enabled to develop their latent gifts, to 
create a characteristic life of their own, and so enrich the life of hu- 
manity by their distinctive contributions? Or shall they be depressed 
and degraded, and made the tool of others, the instrument of their gain, 
the victim of their greed and lust? — J. H. Oldham, The World and the 
Gospel. 



CHAPTER V 
FLOOD TIDE IN THE DESTINY OF AFRICA 

*^The Next Tinder-Box of the World" 

Such is the startling description which H. G. Wells 
gives of what Africa may become. It is a graphic statement 
of the central importance of Africa in the Peace Conference 
which will conclude the war and the century which follows it. 
We cannot contemplate the ruin which has followed the 
flare-up in ''the tinder-box of the Balkans" in the present 
war, without realizing the gravity of the question of the 
disposition of Africa. ''A muddling in Africa this year," 
says Mr. Wells, ''may kill your son and mine in the next 
decade. ' ' In The New Map of Africa, Herbert A. Gibbons 
echoes the same warning. "The happiness of our children, 
in a world where peace and harmony reign, depends much 
on the new map of Africa. ' ' ^ 

Africa and the Future 

The seeds of many of the international rivalries which 
bore fruit in the present conflict were in Africa. And if the 
nations of Europe in the years to come regard Africa as so 
much loot to be grabbed in a selfish and jealous spirit and 
exploited with no regard for the benefit of the people of 
Africa, they will lay up for themselves the certainty of 
future conflict. 

There is a far-reaching significance in the presence on 
the battle line of the many varieties of soldiers from Africa 
fighting under the flags of France and England, Belgium 



H. A. Gibbons, The New Map of Africa, p. 491. 

113 



114 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

and Italy. In one sense it is not their war, in that they have 
no nation of their own to fight for. But in another sense it 
is emphatically their war, for they will be affected by the 
outcome and the settlement moist take large account of them. 
Because Africa is under control of one or another of the 
European nations, it will be more vitally affected by the ulti- 
mate decision of the present war than any of the main geo- 
graphical divisions of the earth save only Europe. The 
welfare and destiny of Africa are inextricably interlocked 
with the welfare and destiny of Europe and the world. A 
wise statesmanship must find some other role for the great 
continent of Africa than merely that of a bone of contention. 

The Religious Destiny of the Continent 

The question of the religious development of Africa can- 
not be separated from its tremendous importance in the 
future of the world. What kind of social ideals and reli- 
gious ideas and practices control the life of the 130,000,000 
or more of the population of Africa will be of vast concern 
to the world. However far native Africa may be from the 
power of self-government, the trend of movement in the pres- 
ent century will be undeniably in the direction of a larger 
measure of self-rule for all peoples. The great war for 
democracy which is shaking the world is bound to change 
current conceptions of the justice of regarding any race as 
a '^subject race." Liberal Europe cannot fight against 
autocracy and at the same time perpetuate it in its treat- 
ment of subject colonies. H. Gr. Wells may be too eager a 
prophet in his statement, ^'Long before A. D. 2100 there will 
be no such thing as a subject race in all the world." ^ Time 
alone can tell. But he has stated the direction in which the 
world is swiftly moving. Surely, there can be no argument 
over the absolute necessity for the great mass of backward, 
pagan Africa to have the mental enlightenment, social uplift 
and spiritual truth of Christianity before it is ready for the 

^H. G. Wells, What is Coming, p. 240. 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 115 

first step of self-government. More than that, Christian 
influence is necessary in order that Africa may be able to 
secure the largest benefits of European rule. 

The appeal of Africa comes to the Christian world to- 
day with a double force. It is the old and changeless appeal 
of any people in need of the uplifting power of the gospel, 
the call of physical suffering, mental and spiritual darkness, 
which Christian love must answer. But there is also the 
urgent necessity to-day of supplying the transforming and 
enlightening influences of Christianity so that developing 
Africa, destined to hold so important a place in the world's 
life, may not be a menace to the world's highest progress. 

Africa's ^^Hat Is in the Ring" 

In these days of military stride, Africa, in the words of 
General J. C. Smuts, the former Boer leader and present 
English general, ^ ^ has marched with great suddenness to the 
center of the European stage, and must henceforth pro- 
foundly influence the problems of its statesmanship. ' ' ^ 
Long, long lines of men from Africa have landed at Mar- 
seilles and other ports of France to fight the battles of free- 
dom. From Algiers and Tunis and Egypt they have come, 
dark-skinned, strong as steel, quick of eye. From the 
Soudan and Central Africa they have poured in. This land- 
ing in France is a living symbol of the landing of Africa 
in the consciousness of Europe and the world. It must be the 
sign also of the landing of Africa on the conscience and 
heart of Christendom. The future of Africa has as import- 
ant a bearing on the future of Christianity as it has on the 
political arrangements of the world. Aside from future im- 
portance, however, is the great consideration of justice 
which should move both state and church to Africa's welfare. 
Here are these representatives of Africa fighting for the 
world's freedom, thousands giving their lives for justice and 
for opportunity. In all fairness, do they not deserve some 
* The Geographical Journal, March, 1918. 



116 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

for tliemselves ? Does not fairness demand of every govern- 
ing nation in Africa that the political ideal shall be the wel- 
fare of the governed peoples? And does not fairness de- 
mand of the Church of Christ that the millions of Africa, a 
great orphanage of backward children, be given the Chris- 
tian education and healing and teaching which shall lead 
them out into spiritual freedom? 

The Rock of Gibraltae 

The approach to Africa from the north is by the Rock 
of Gibraltar and Gibraltar is a fit symbol for Africa in 
Christian history. It has been a Gibraltar to Christian 
missions — a continent of superlative obstacles, of deadly 
oppositions, of impenetrable darkness until two genera- 
tions ago. And yet, with a glaring contrast to all this dark 
side, it has to show some of the greatest triumphs of Chris- 
tian success in the conversion of whole tribes which have 
been achieved in any land or at any age. It had always had 
a magnetic, mysterious pull on great souls, and without any 
question it has the longest and brightest line of truly great 
missionaries of any mission field on earth. But, after all, 
the contrast is not so hard to explain. It is simply the old, 
old law, that the hardest tasks always attract the greatest 
and most daring men. 

^'I Dare You'' 

Nearly every fact in African geography has been a 
bolted door to Christian advance. Physical and social fea- 
tures of the land have shouted ^'I dare you" into Christian 
ears. Christian missions in Africa have relatively less to 
show than in any other continent, and many of the reasons 
are not far to seek. 

Begin with the size of the continent. Look at the map 
on the next page, with a large section of the world tucked 
away in its corners, as though Africa were a large bag into 
which some giant had hurriedly dumped half the globe. 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 117 

How snugly our own mighty United States nestles up in 
one corner! China and India do not crowd it at all, with 
plenty of room for Europe and Argentina. It is approxi- 




COMPARATIVE SIZE OF AFRICA 



Notice how easily Africa's great bulk accommodates the United States, France, Germany, the 
British Isles, Norway, Sweden, Argentina, China and India. 



mately 6,000 by 5,000 miles, over three times as large as 
Europe and half as large again as North America. It is as 
far around the coast of Africa as it is around the world. 
To this large expanse must be added the fact that the large 



118 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

island section of the continent is exceedingly difficult of 
access. 

The climate has been a high barrier to missionary effort. 
Many mission enterprises have been stopped by tragedies 
like that which overtook Methodism's first foreign mission- 
ary, Melville Cox, who died of fever in Liberia four months 
after landing. The low-lying coast strip of a few hundred 
miles is a particularly unhealthy climate. Farther inland 
the climate of the central plateau is more healthful, although 
through the whole of Central Africa the climate is hard on 
the white man. 

Danger has been a real deterrent to Europeans and 
Americans in Africa. Tigers, cobras, and lions are far more 
attractive in the zoo than they are in the jungle. The savage 
tribes have taken a large toll of death, and travel in the 
interior until recent years has been precarious. 

Lack of exploration prevented missionary occupation. 
The intrepid spirit of Livingstone was the first to draw the 
veil from Central Africa, and he has been dead only forty- 
five years. 

The Tower of Bahel in Africa has offered hindrances 
of 843 different varieties. There are 843 varieties of speech 
in Africa, the vast rojajority of which the missionary must 
reduce to writing for the first time and patiently and pain- 
fully evolve a dictionary and grammar for them. The mis- 
sionaries and Bible Societies have accomplished the stu- 
pendous task of translating and printing the Scriptures into 
100 African tongues, but there are still 423 tongues without 
the word of God ! There are 543 distinct languages and 300 
dialects. 

Finally the savage state of the people makes the task a 
larger one than that of a land with an ancient civilization, 
such as India or China. Everything must be taught. Words 
for the most elementary Christian terms and ideas must 
often be invented. The process of education is necessarily a 
slow and exhausting one. To the difficulty of making an 
approach to the pagan must be added the fact of North 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFEICA 119 

Africa's domination by Mohammedanism, a religion which 
has been through all Christian history the hardest to over- 
throw. 

The Top of the Morning 

So much for the obstacles. Many of them remain and 
will remain for generations. Nevertheless, such a picture 
leaves out some of the most striking characteristics of the 
Africa of to-day. For Africa stands to-day not at midnight, 
which settled over her for centuries, but at the top of the 
morning. The opening up of Africa to European civiliza- 
tion has been progressing at a surprising speed. In 1875 not 
more than a tenth of Africa was under white dominion. To- 
day the whole of the continent, with the exception of Abys- 
sinia and the small Negro republic of Liberia, is under 
European rule— all in forty-three years! ^^ Black Man's 
Africa" is no more. The European powers have spent 
enormous sums in the development of their African posses- 
sions. Steamship lines have been projected and great rail- 
way systems have been built far into the interior. 

The world has come upon the native with a bewildering 
rush, with its railways, steamboats, electric cars, planta- 
tions, factories, mines, laws, taxes, magistrates, police. In 
South Africa, under British governmtent, a great industrial 
European civilization has sprung into being with large cities 
and the richest mines in the world. The whole equipment of 
modern civilization is moving inland from all directions, 
including the cultivation of plantations, cattle ranches, mer- 
cantile establishments, forts, army posts, city and territorial 
governments, agricultural implements, and industrial ma- 
chinery. Railway systems of twenty-five thousand miles are 
now in operation, nine tenths of which are included in the 
British systems of the Nile Valley and South Africa and the 
French systems of Algeria and Tunis. The Cape-to-Cairo 
Railway, which was near completion at the beginning of the 
war, will bring the southern tip of Africa within ten days 
of London and Paris. The barred door is swinging and 



120 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Africa is seeing a development wliicli greatly mnltiplies its 
openness to Christian missions, and, as we shall see, its 
urgent need of them. 

Chicago Moves to North Africa 

If you still think of the Pyramids and the Sphinx as the 
most exciting things in North Africa, you are almost as far 
behind the times as the mummies themselves ! In the French- 
controlled countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis and in 
Egypt under British control, modern cities have been reared 
which make the American visitor think he is looking at a 
mirage. The European population of North Africa is over 
a million and is increasing. Algiers, a city of 200,000, is 
largely European. Out of its population 70,000 are French 
and 42,000 other foreigners. Oran, on the coast of Algeria, 
is a young and rapidly growing Chicago of 100,000 popu- 
lation, with apartment houses, boulevards, and imposing 
public building's. Constantine, in Algeria, is another bus- 
tling city of 250,000, largely Europeanized. There are over 
16,000,000 people in North Africa, and the region is capable 
of supporting many more. The picturesque days of the 
pirates of Tripoli and Algiers, with which is associated 
such a stirring chapter of American naval history, are over, 
and the swift modernization of North Africa has displaced 
the old fanatical exclusiveness and changeless modes of life 
and thought and thrown open that whole section of Africa to 
new influences. 

Enter — the "War 

Prophesying just where a tornado will hit, or indicating 
just what buildings and fences it will topple over, is uncer- 
tain business. Particularly in connection with so great a 
tornado as the present war, is it impossible to say just what 
effect it will have. Nevertheless, when the tornado of war 
has already flattened ancient fences it is permissible to 
record the fact, without indulging in loose prophesying. It 
is easy to see two clear results of the war on the Christian 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 121 

opportunity in Africa. The first is that the political power 
of Mohammedanism has toppled like a house of cards. The 
war has divided the house against itself in such a way that 
the prestige of Islam will never recover. The old dream of 
a united Moslem world of 200,000,000 is a hopeless one. The 
Mohamm'edans of India and Africa have been fighting 
against their brothers in the faith in Constantinople. 
Turkey is the only self-governing country left of all the 
lands once ruled by the followers of Mohammed. The 
proclamation of a holy war by the Sultan of Turkey, bidding 
all Moslems to rally to the defense of the faith, had no effect 
whatever, showing clearly that national bonds have been 
substituted for the religious one. The second effect has been 
the new contacts established by Mohammedans and the open- 
ing of new doors to European and Christian influence. 
Doors closed for centuries have been blown open, as it were, 
by the dynamite of the world war. This does not mean that 
the conversion of Islamic Africa has become in any sense an 
easy problem. Far from it; but it does mean that a new 
approachability has been established ; and if we believe in a 
divine purpose at work in human life, we cannot neglect its 
meaning of responsibility and opportunity for the Christian 
Church. 

The Three Problems of Africa 

Africa to-day from the Christian standpoint, like all 
Gaul in Caesar's time, is divided into three parts. In the 
north is Mohammedan Africa, with a population of 40,000,- 
000, the base of the movement of Mohammedanism to the 
south. In the south is the commercial European civilization 
which is just as real a peril in another way to the welfare of 
Africa. There are 10,000,000 in this civilized, European- 
ize'd, nominally Christian South Africa. Between these two 
advancing forces on the north and south is Central, pagan 
Africa with 80,000,000. The great majority are still in an 
uncivilized state, devotees of pagan religions that are 
doomed, backward children in mind, the easy victims of 



122 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

exploitation accompanied with the white man's vices, and 
the easy prey to the Mohammedan zealot. Surely, such a 
spectacle cannot fail to move the noblest feelings of the 
church and call forth the best in her. 

The Mohammedan Peril 

The Mohammedan invasion of Africa from the north, 
now resulting in the wholesale conversion of native tribes, is 
the most vigorous antagonistic force which Christianity is 
meeting anywhere on earth. It is probably not too much to 
say that it is the most active opposition which it has met 
since the followers of Mohammed broke forth in their first 
fury in the seventh century. Many Christian leaders in all 
parts of the world regard this Mohammedan advance in 
Central Africa as the greatest crisis before the Christian 
Churches to-day. South fromi the lands that front on the 
Mediterranean Sea and west from Egypt and the Soudan, 
Islam is thrusting itself into pagan Central Africa. The 
faith is being carried with a zeal that puts all other religions, 
including Christianity, to shame. It is not the work of official 
leaders so much as the pressing concern of every Moham- 
medan. Formerly Islam followed the track of Moslem con- 
querors. Later it propagated itself along the slave routes. 
To-day it goes along the trade pathways, and it is one of the 
ironies of history that the introduction of modern civiliza- 
tion into Africa, by railways, good roads, and development 
of trade, has been a large factor in making a new Moham- 
medan advance possible. The movement which is winning 
the tribes of Central Africa to Islam is to-day more wide- 
spread, more insidious than ever, and as certain as the 
rising tide. The mierchants carry the Koran and the Moslem 
catechism wherever they carry their merchandise. The 
Mosque follows the trader. All ranks of men are propa- 
gandists : 

"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. 
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief." 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 123 

The Victoky of the Crescent 

The most arresting fact in connection with this advance 
is that pagan Africa is becoming Mohammedan far more 
rapidly than it is becoming Christian. For every 33 natives 
who become Christians 100 become Mohammedans. In the 
Soudan there is only one Christian missionary for every 
100,000, while every Mohammedan that comes along is a 
worker for Islam. Is it any wonder that the Crescent is de- 
feating the Cross in the conflict! The Mohammedan gain is 
so great that many observers have regarded the outcome as 
already settled, that pagan Africa will become Moham- 
medan.^ 

It is in Africa alone that Islam is making any such 
advance. In India it is not keeping pace with Christianity 
at all. According to the last census in India, Mohammedans 
increased only at the rate of 6.7 as compared with an in- 
crease of 32 per cent for Christians. At the time when 
Islam is losing its prestige and relative power elsewhere, 
shall Christians allow it to gain a new continent-wide 
dominion in Africa, whence it can propagate itself for 
centuries to come? To win the continent of Africa away 
from Islam is thus, then, to be a service to the Chris tianiza- 
tion of all the world, and to lose Central Africa will be to 
cripple the Christian enterprise in all non-Christian lands, 
perhaps for centuries. 

The Appeal of Islam 

There are many elements in the success of Islam among 
the natives. It is propagated by traders, hence it is often to 
the native's economic advantage to accept the trader's reli- 
gion along with his dry goods. The Mohammedan creed is 
simple: ^' There is no god but God: Mohannned is his 
prophet." It is an easy faith to pass along. It is held by 
the Mohammedan with flaming conviction. It comes to the 
African from a man much more like himself than the ^ ^white- 
faced" Christian missionary. It makes no hard moral de- 

^H. G. Wells, What is Coming, p. 247. 



124 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

inands, allows polygamy and many pagan customs to exist 
undisturbed. In addition to these reasons, there is the fact 
that Mohammedanism is undeniably favored by European 
governments such as England and France. Christian mis- 
sionaries have been forbidden to work in areas designated 
by the governments as Moslem.^ This is done through fear 
of the Moslem chiefs and the desire to refrain from arousing 
their enmity. It is easy to understand this motive of polit- 
ical expediency, but it has made the governments practical 
partners in the spread of the Mohammedan religion. 

Is Mohammedanism a Step to Christianity.^ 

Two classes of people will say, ^' Why be concerned over 
this sweeping invasion of Mohammedanism!" One class 
believes that it is the best religion for the natives. The other 
believes that it is a half-way house to Christianity. Both 
are wrong. All experience proves that it is much harder to 
win men from Mohammedanism to Christianity than it is to 
win them from their native paganism. 

As for Islam being a good-enough religion for Africans, 
God forbid that any Christian should ever retreat from the 
position that no religion is good enough for any child of Grod 
except the revelation of his love in Jesus Christ. Moham- 
medanism brings to the savage in Africa many benefits. It 
brings clothing, some learning and the abolition of many de- 
grading superstitions. It inculcates temperance and clean- 
liness. On the other hand, it degrades womanhood, allows 
polygamy and sensuality. It lays the dead hand of an iron 
tradition on all mental and moral progress. It fosters the 
spirit of hate and violence. Its ideal of life as portrayed in 
Mohammed is worlds below that portrayed in Christ. It is 
a backward force socially and politically. 

^^They Shall Not Pass" 

The supreme demand of the hour is to throw across 
Central Africa from the western to the eastern coast a line 



Patton, The Lure of Africa, p. 64. 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 125 

of mission stations which shall effectually occupy t|ie vacant 
areas and stop the advancing Mohammedan wave. There is 
need in Africa for the equivalent of that line before Ver- 
dun which gave to the world the deathless watchword, ' ' They 
shall not pass." There are vast areas in Central Africa 
inhabited by tribes whose evangelization is not provided for 
in the plans of any missionary society. A line of mission 
stations across the continent has already been partly flung 
and in this line the Methodist mission in Central Africa 
plays a vital and strategic part. The Centenary survey 
plans a wise strengthening and extension of its activity. 

The other method of meeting this Mohammedan peril is 
to meet it right at its base in North Africa, and that also 
Methodism is doing. It has laid the beginnings of mission 
stations that shall take hold of the life of these old and 
solidly Moslem lands. For, as has been well pointed out, 
^^We have not only to stay the advance of Islam in Africa, 
we are to win the Moslem world in Africa for Christ; and 
until the foundations of Islam in the north are shaken, the 
Christianity that may be established in Central Africa will 
be perpetually exposed to its assaults.'' ^ North Africa Mo- 
hammedanism is a hard field. To convert the Mohammedan, 
some one has said, is *Ho get the proudest man on earth to 
take the thing he hates from the hand of the man he 
despises." No easy task that. Historically, it has provided 
the hardest that Christianity has ever attempted. She has 
never attempted it on any large scale. But to-day European 
influence is speedily disintegrating the barriers of Moham- 
medan exclusiveness. Islam is not holding its own against 
the unbelief which is flooding it from European civilization.^ 
There is large new promise for Christian effort in Northern 
Africa. 

Pagan Afkica 

Eighty millions in pagan Africa, the largest solid block 



^ students and the World-Wide Expansion of Christianity, p. 67. 
^ D. B. MacDonald, Aspects of Islam, p. 12. 



126 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

of paganism in the world! In ntter innocence of written 
language for the most part, divided against any solid Chris- 
tian advance by a multitude of languages (six hundred and 




AFRICA 

Eighty millioh pagans caught between two forces. Forty million Mohainmedans advancing 
from the north. From the south, commerciaUsm steaming up the rivers, and building steel trails 
through the jungle. 

seventy languages and dialects have not yet been reduced to 
writing), it is under the dominion of the crudest supersti- 
tions, savage, primitive, and childlike. 

Yet this one thought must be kept in mind with all the 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 127 

obstacles. In pagan Africa are eighty millions of the most 
accessible people on earth. Some of the brightest trophies 
of the cross are found among these pagan tribes, ''Kohinoor 
diamonds of the King's crown." Where is there a country 
that for missionary romance and apostolic success can sur- 
pass the story of Uganda? 

The need of Christianity in primitive, childlike, savage 
Africa cannot be truly conceived from the outside. It is the 
land where fear holds sway. A hundred evil spirits and many 
hundred cruel, debasing, and destructive superstitions oc- 
cupy the central position of religion. The crude conditions 
of savagery, with its cruelties, take a large toll of life. The 
oppression of women, miarriage by barter, polygamy, 
domestic slavery, the neglect.and suffering of childhood, are 
constant features of life. There is no attempt at education. 
^^ Apart from mission stations, they do not even know that 
writing has been invented. ' ' ^ The only medicines are the 
useless superstitions of the witch doctor, and the death rate 
mounts accordingly. While the native African is the spoiled 
child of nature, in so far as prodigal provision of food is con- 
cerned, he knows so little of the cultivation of the soil that 
in many parts of the continent long stretches of hunger and 
famine are frequent. 

The Demoe" of Civilization 

But how happy, comparatively, the African would be if 
those were all his troubles and perils ! There is rushing in 
on him, principally from the Christian (mark the word!) 
civilization of South Africa, an evil spirit far more terrible 
than any Mumbo Jumbo of the forest — ;the spirit com- 
mercial exploitation. In the wake of the steam engine, push- 
ing its way into the center of the continent, are the deadly 
attendants of the white man, drunkenness and immorality, 
before which the childlike black man is helpless. 

How we must bow our heads and blush when we call the 

' Murray, The Call of a World Task, p. 117. 



128 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

commercial greed tliat is bringing ruin to the native of 
Africa, Christian! How much we prefer to call it "West- 
ern'^ civilization because we dare not say Christian ! 

European control has brought great and undeniable 
benefits to Africa. Slave raids and tribal warfare are 
largely abolished. Much has been done to combat disease 
and famine. Cruel practices, such as the murder of twins, 
ordeals of poison, etc., are in many places things of the past. 
Standards of life have been raised and laws established. 
Education has been provided in many places. Let all this be 
freely acknowledged. Yet there is the other side of the 
shield. The relations of Europe to Africa have been stained 
by the hideous iniquity of the slave traffic. And while an en- 
lightened conscience has practically put an end to that, the 
natives are still exposed to the danger of pitiless exploita- 
tion by the white race. The forced labor, the introduction of 
liquor and immorality have worked such havoc that it is a 
fair conclusion that civilization has brought more evil than 
good to Africa. 

What Chbistians Must Do 

The Christian cannot settle the vexed political problems 
of Africa, but Christians in Europe and America can do 
much to demand that the ideal of government in Africa shall 
be for the benefit of the African and not for commercial gain. 
Government is a help or hindrance to Christian progress. 
Christians cannot effectually teach the natives a gospel of 
love and brotherhood, when a so-called Christian govern- 
ment is practicing selfish oppression of them. Lest we in 
America think we have no part in this corruption, note the 
fact that in 1914-15 over a million and a half gallons of rum 
were shipped from Boston ! An international agreement to 
protect Africa from this murderous traffic must be made. 

The gospel of Christ must be supplied to the African to 
meet his great needs, and to prepare him to withstand the 
shock of the advent of commercialized civilization with all 
its attendant vices. Western civilization is already violently 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 129 

disturbing and breaking down native life and morality and 
removing old restraints. ^ ^Unless some new moral sanctions 
can be supplied to take the place of those swept away, the 
people are left unprotected and helpless, '' says J. H. Old- 
ham, ^^to face the overwhelming temptations to which they 
are increasingly exposed. ' ' ^ A new spiritual basis must be 
provided for the life of the people — and the Christian reli- 
gion is the only force capable of achieving the necessary 
transformation. 

Africa and the Centenary 

The Methodist Centenary program for Africa deals 
with both of these perils of Africa. Look at the map and let 
your eye grasp the generalship of our location in Africa. In 
North, South, West, East, and Central Africa radiating 
centers of influence are already located. The Methodist 
Episcopal Church is located in the Mohammedan strong- 
holds of Algeria and Tunis ; in pagan Africa, in Liberia on 
the west coast, farther to the south in Angola and in Central 
Africa in the Belgian Congo, and in the heart of Rhodesia 
and in Portuguese East Africa on the east coast. In six 
strategic areas the church is at work, under ^ve friendly 
governments, with stations easily reached by steamship and 
railroad. Our responsibility is for 20,000,000 people in ter- 
ritories already occupied or assigned to us by governments 
or through arrangements with other churches. There is a 
total staff of 92 missionaries and about 650 native preachers 
and teachers, with 364 churches, chapels, and homes, 23 edu- 
cational institutions and four hospitals and dispensaries. 
There are at present about 10,000 pupils in the schools and 
33,000 members and adherents of the church. 

In the Mohammedan Strongholds 

In North Africa the most promising work is among the 
children. Four homes for boys and ten for girls are supply- 

^ J. H. Oldham, The World and the Gospel, p. 132. 



130 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

ing Christian en-\TLroimieiit and influence for students in gov- 
ernment schools, and making a strategic beginning for evan- 
gelistic work. "We have converted Mohammedans who are 
now local preachers. Evangelistic circuits for preaching 
and distribution of Christian literature among Moham- 
medans must be established and centers where native 

evangelists can be stationed. 

* 

. Reaching Out in Pagan Africa 

In the Republic of Liberia we have a press, a college, 
industrial school, and theological seminaries. In Angola, 
on the west coast, there are churches, boys' and girls' 
schools, a printing establishment, and large mission farms. 
In the center of the Belgian Congo there is a fast develop- 
ing industrial mission, with marvelous results surrounding 
that center with 80 primary schools. The beginning of that 
mission is a story to rank with some of the great journeys of 
Livingstone. Before our missionaries went into the Congo 
region it was found that a native who had gone back into the 
interior had been praying for two years that God would 
send a missionary; and Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Springer were 
impelled to go, though without adequate resources, and 
crossed the continent on foot until they found this lone Chris- 
tian. Already a great mission has been founded. 

At old Umtali, in Rhodesia, we have 3,000 acres of land 
and many buildings, turned over to the church by the British 
government, a flourishing industrial mission of the type 
most needed. Training in agriculture, carpentry, brick- 
making, and other industries supplements and extends 
evangelistic work. • 

In Portuguese East Africa the mission comprises 
churches, a mission press, training school, girls' school, and 
hospitals. Our doctor there is the only medical man in a ter- 
ritory populated by three and a half millions of people. 
At six o'clock in the morning as many as fifty patients wlII 
assemble outside the hospital to wait for him. 



FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 131 

The church must occupy providential openings for 
service. Native chiefs are requesting missionaries, and in 
many cases are eager to grant necessary land and buildings 
for schools and churches and homes. Many strong evan- 
gelistic centers must be established. At least ten additional 
missionaries a year must be sent to keep up present work 
and insure reasonable advance. Hundreds of native pastor- 
teachers must be trained. The success of work in schools 
must be followed up by more schools and teachers. For the 
medical work, in a field of more crying need than anywhere 
on earth, the Centenary program calls for four new hospitals 
to be established, and the enlargement of the two existing 
ones with missionary physicians and adequate staff. 

To-MOEEOW 

Great souls have worked in Africa; Saint Augustine 
and Athanasius; Robert Moffat and David Livingstone; 
those three wonderful Marys of the modern gospel story, 
Mary Moffat, Mary Livingstone and Mary Slessor; Mackay 
of Uganda, Bishop Hannington and George Grenfell. Our 
own record is bright with the names of Cox, William Taylor, 
and Hartzell. 

But think of the men and women who will follow them ! 
Surely, at this very tip of the new dawn in Africa the church 
will not withhold the light and leading of Christ. 



It is beginning to dawn upon some people that Christian missions 
are really acting as a leaven in the Eastern world, and that whether the 
East shall become Christian is a matter that vitally concerns every 
nation and must determine the future of humanity. If the East with 
its swarming millions should ever learn our civilization on its industrial 
and military side only while it abandons its ancient religions and ethic 
— both of which are happening before our eyes — the supremacy and even 
the safety of . the West is more than threatened. We have seen what 
can happen to our semi-Christianized civilization; but what a purely 
atheistic civilization would be we can now perhaps begin to imagine. — 
W. E. Orchard, The Outlook for Religion. 

Since Christianity assimilated Greek thought and conquered 
Eoman civilization it never faced a task so stupendous as that of 
the conquest of the Orient. Japan, with all her progress in the arts 
and crafts of civilization and all her friendliness toward Christian eth- 
ical standards, is far from being a Christian nation. . . . 

Yet Japan is a prize worth capturing. The situation in the whole 
Orient, in fact, constitutes one of the most splendid opportunities, and 
at the same time one of the gravest crises, in the whole history of the 
church. With every passing year the opportunity is slipping farther 
from her grasp. I make bold to say that her victory or defeat in 
Japan will largely determine the future of Christianity in the whole 
Far East. — Dr. Tasuku Harada, President of Doshisha University, 
Tokio, 



CHAPTER VI 
THE CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 

Eastward Ho! 

Few days in the world's history have had larger signifi- 
cance than that one of which Balboa, ^'with eagle eyes," first 

"Stared at the Pacific, and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise. 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

The opening of the Pacific Ocean to the ships, the arts 
and ideas of the Western world has vastly changed the 
course of history for both East and West. Yet the real 
importance of the Pacific in the world's affairs lies in the 
future. To-day Europe and America are standing tiptoe 
behind Balboa, gazing at the far Pacific with wonder and 
expectation even larger than his. For these, too, are days of 
discovery, when the world is realizing that the Pacific Ocean 
will be the scene of the next great drama in its progress. 
The development of the great lands and peoples which are 
set in the far eastern Pacific, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, 
and Malaysia, and their relation to China and the rest of 
Asia, will unquestionably be the great world-movement of 
this century. 

The New Mediterkanean Basin 

What the Mediterranean Sea has been throughout much 
of the world's past history, the central arena of its great 
actions, on which were played out national and racial 
struggles affecting its destiny, the Pacific Ocean will be in 
the future. Around the Mediterranean Sea were reared 
great civilizations beginning with the ancient kingdom of 

135 



136 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Egypt. There sailed the ship of Tyre. Along its shores 
marched the legions of Persia in a vain attempt to strangle 
the freedom of Greece. Alexander the Great became the 
master and built great cities. From opposite sides of the 
sea, Rome and Carthage were locked in deadly struggle for 
dominion of that Mediterranean world. Around its shores 
great religions have contended for mastery. Here Chris- 
tianity defeated paganism and struggled with Islam. So 
down through the centuries it has been the seething center 
of commercial, political, and religious movements and con- 
flicts of world-wide meaning. 

The Pacific Ocean is the new center for the world move- 
ments of this century and for many to come. Our world has 
outgrown the Mediterranean, important as that will always 
be. Around the new arena of action in the Pacific are gath- 
ered peoples whose numbers and resources far outrun those 
of any other section of the world. Picture the peoples in this 
new chapter of history — Japan with its fifty-five millions 
crowded to the bursting point ; Manchuria and Siberia, enor- 
mous, bristling question marks ; the Philippines, a salient of 
American democracy thrust into the Orient; Malaysia, into 
whose open fields are beginning to flock the hungry, crowded 
millions from China, All these will vitally aifect China her- 
self with her four hundred million ' ^ possibilities ' M 

Theee Keys 

Is it any wonder that 'Hhe mastery of the Pacific" is a 
matter that rivets the eyes of the world! "What that 
''mastery" will be in a political sense, whether peaceful or 
militaristic, whether Japanese or European or Chinese, or a 
mixture of all, cannot be foreseen. 

But of vastly greater importance to the world is the 
question of the Christian mastery of the Pacific, the domin- 
ion of Christian moral and spiritual ideals in the expand- 
ing life of these great peoples. Upon this Christian influ- 
ence will depend the character of the political development. 



CHEISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 137 

The prevalence of Christian ideals will mean the opening 
of this new center of development to peace, to liberty and 
democratic ideals, and to cooperation between nations. A 
Pacific basin without Christianity will mean a new stage set 
for conflict, the play of selfish national ambitions, the ex- 
ploitation of weaker peoples, and moral darkness. 

It is a struggle for large stakes, in Christian warfare, 
upon which we look in this chapter. Lord Fisher, recently 
the First Lord of the Admiralty of Great Britain, once said : 
i i There are five keys to the world. They are the Straits of 
Dover, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Straits 
of Malacca, the Cape of Good Hope.'' However this may 
be true of naval supremacy, there are three keys to the 
Pacific in Christian strategy — Tokyo, Manilla, and Singa- 
pore. The winning of these keys will mean open doors to 
Christian mastery in Japan, in the Philippines, and in that 
vast real estate bonanza to the south, Malaysia. Let us look 
at these three lands in turn. 

Japan" and Kobea 

We may very fittingly take off our hats when our 
steamer dooks in Japan, for we have reached the Land of 
Achievement. It is just fifty years since the Reformation 
of 1868, when Japan began to adopt "Western civilization. 
In that time she has become almost more modern than her 
teachers. She has tried to catch up at one bound with the 
progress made by other nations in centuries. This difficult 
task is being done with marvelous rapidity. Japan is the 
modern Aladdin who has rubbed the lamp of Western learn- 
ing and a vast new modern civilization has arisen. She has a 
system of universal education which enrolls ninety per cent 
of the children of school age. Her genius for adapting the 
machinery of the Western world has astounded all nations. 
She has vanquished what was a supposedly first-class 
European power, Russia, and that victory resounded 
throughout all Asia. 



138 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 



The Leadership of Asia 

Japan occupies an undoubted position of leadership 
tliroughout Asia to-day. Her influence is increasing daily. 




■ CBUiA SEA 



PAcinc ocEAH 



JAPAX 
An empire st^i^•illg for leadership 



How far that leadership is welcomed in all respects by other 
nations in Asia ; to what extent Japan is feared in China, 
and what grounds there are for it, are questions on which 
wide disagreement would be found. The far Eastern situa- 



CHEISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 139 

tion shifts so from day to day that the vast majority of 
political pronouncements should be revised every night and 
morning. But of the question of Japan's leadership in the 
Orient there can be no doubt. Whether it be in the educa- 
tional, financial, political, military, naval, commercial, or 
industrial sphere, Japanese leadership is to-day very ex- 
tensive. China has had large numbers of her leaders edu- 
cated in Japan. Japan has retained all the prestige won in 
the Russo-Japanese war and the present war is giving her 
a new position as a world power. 

Japan leads Asia — ^but whither! That is the question 
which confronts the world to-day. 

Japan's Need of Christianity 

Japan needs Christianity supremely because the moral 
foundations of her national life are slipping away. The 
whirling movements of the transformation to modern life 
and education have swept away many of the did sanctions of 
morality and idealism and have brought many new tempta- 
tions. No new force has yet been found to take the place of 
the old which has been weakened. In the words of Count 
Okuma, the former prime minister, *' Japan at present may 
be likened to a sea into which a hundred currents of Oriental 
and Occidental thoughts have poured, and, not having 
effected a fusion, are raging, wildly tossing, warring, roar- 
ing. The old religion and old morals are steadily losing 
their hold and nothing has yet arisen to take their place.'' ^ 
The new environment, commercial and industrial, and the 
new wealth in many quarters, are increasing luxury, license 
and lust. It is no exaggeration to say the life blood of the 
nation is being drained off by immorality. The educational 
system of Japan, so admirable in many ways, has been 
powerless to prevent the moral peril. The teaching of reli- 
gion and ethics founded on religion is prohibited in the 
schools and the moral teaching given is shallow, urging 
^Quoted in Reports of World Missionary Conference, vol. iv, p. 116. 



140 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

patriotism and loyalty without giving a reasonable and 
fundamental basis. Among the influential student class, 
agnosticism, selfishness, contempt for the family tie and 
materialism are destructive influences. As a recent writer 
has said, ^^Dreadnoughts, machine guns, gold currency and 
braid, electric railways and imported tailorings, are at best 
only accessories. Poverty, mortality, and crime and the 
condition of the subject races are the true barometers of 
national welfare. ' ' ^ 

Break Up of Old Faiths 

The old faiths of Japan, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Con- 
fucianism, are loosening their hold. The vital influence of 
Buddhism over educated people is practically gone, even 
though outwardly Buddhism is marked by a vigorous imi- 
tation of Christian methods such as Sunday schools. Young 
Men's Buddhist Associations, adaptations of Christian 
hymns, etc. But this outward activity is accompanied by 
inward weakening of its hold and grave doubts on the part 
of Japanese leaders over its ability to supply the moral 
dynamic the nation needs. 

Needs of the New Day 

The industrial revolution brings a new demand for a 
strong moral sense and quickened conscience. The increase 
of factories, from 125 to 20,000 in thirty-four years, brings 
grave dangers to the nation.^ A vigorous moral and social 
conscience is needed to protest against the waste and cruelty 
of child labor if the nation is not to suffer frightful loss. 
Government statistics declare that out of every hundred 
girls to enter factory work, twenty-three die within one year 
of their return home, and of these fifty per cent die of tuber- 
culosis. Nothing but the realization of the Christian con- 
ception of the intrinsic worth of the individual will save 

^ A. M. Pooley, Japan at the Cross Roads, p. 21. 
^ Price, Ancient Peoples at New Tasks, p. 37. 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 141 

Japan from the wide destructiveness of modern machinery 
driven by commercial greed. 

*^The White Disaster *' 

An able Japanese writer, Okaknra Kakuzo, says, '^You 
talk of the Yellow Peril, but what about the White Dis- 
aster f There is a very real meaning to the term. Western 
industry and commerce, which break down old moral re- 
straints without bringing any new moral or religious power 
is the true White Disaster for Japan and every Oriental 
country, a disaster already being felt in many quarters. 
Without taking Christianity to Japan in an adequate way, 
we bring serious problems without the help of the great 
principles necessary to solve them and do not truly share our 
best, only our second best and often our worst. 

Concerning Democracy 

What must be said regarding the main contention of this 
volume — the necessity of the Christian gospel to Democ- 
racy! Japan is one of our allies and a land where a high 
degree of education and progress prevail. The truth is just 
as true here as anywhere. No force for the extension of 
democracy and representative government could be intro- 
duced into Japan so strong and beneficent as Christianity. 
It is greatly needed. If Japan is to become a modern de- 
mocracy, where the welfare of the individual is the control- 
ling ideal of government, she needs the Christian vision of 
each man's worth and the ideal of service. If Japan is to be 
a liberalizing and not a grasping power in the Orient, she 
needs the Christian evangel of brotherhood and peace and 
justice built into her national life. 

The Christian Advance 

Christianity has had a large influence in Japan, an in- 
fluence, not to be measured merely by the Protestant com- 



142 CHRISTIAX CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

immity of 150,000 members. Christian ideas have had wide 
influence. Great missionaries such as Yerbeck and others 
have had much to do with launching the new educational 
system. At the present time there is wide recognition on the 
part of the lea'ders of the government of the need of a moral 
and religious basis of national life, coupled with a gi'owing 
recognition of the failure of Buddhism and Shintoism to 
supply that basis. 

The three-year national evangelistic campaign which 
closed last year, participated in by aU Protestant bodies, re- 
sulted in the enrollment of thousands of inquirers and dis- 
closed a receptive spirit toward Christianity. In the last 
three years 1,200.000 coj^ies of the Bible were sold in Japan. 
The demand for admittance to Christian schools and colleges 
is greater than can be granted. 

Xo Time to Lose 

Nevertheless, every advantage must be pressed to the 
utmost without delay, for this serious situation in Ja^Dan 
must be honestly faced. The days of largest opportunity 
are passing. Lest anyone think that Christian leaders in 
other lands such as China and India are insisting on the need 
of hurry in Christian effort with overheated emphasis, look 
carefully at Japan. The opportunity is not so large to-day 
as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Christianity did not 
enter the door when it was opened widest. That is, the op- 
portunity was greater when Japan was first adojDting TVest- 
ern civilization and when the national ideas and standards 
were undergoing greater change. These are unwelcome and 
solemn facts. A Christian traveler recently retnrning from 
Japan said, ' 'I had at times in Japan the feeling that I could 
hear the fateful words of the parable of the ten virgins, ' Too 
late, ye cannot enter now!' '' It is not too late. But the 
church must work in Japan with enlarged forces the works 
of Him that sent it while it is yet day, for the night of less- 
ened opportunity is coming. 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 143 

Does anyone think Japan is almost evangelized! Out 
of 55,000,000 people, there are only about 150,000 native 
Protestant Christians; 26,000,000 are absolutely untouched 
by the Word, with no facilities for hearing it, and millions 
more have never listened to Christian preaching. 

The Centenary Proposals 

The Centenary program for Japan and Korea is united, 
as Korea is now a part of the Japanese empire: The ad- 
vance proposals in Japan are designed to extend the evan- 
gelistic and educational work as swiftly as possible in order 
to meet the opportunity. Methodism in Japan is in a unique 
position, unmatched in any other land. The Japanese Meth- 
odist Church was formed in 1907 out of members of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, South, 
and the Canadian Methodist Church. This action was a 
striking example of two growing movements destined to 
have a great development in Christian missions, church 
unity on the field, and the rise of the native church to self- 
direction and self-support. Our church at the time of the 
union contributed 45 churches and 5,500 members. Each of 
the three churches which united continues its support, with 
a decreasing appropriation each year, and cooperates 
with the Japanese Methodist Church. The Centenary calls 
for cooperation by enlarging and extending the evangelistic 
work to hitherto untouched regions. 

Education 

A work of commanding importance has been done by the 
schools of the church. With the exclusion of religion from 
the state schools and the weakness of what moral instruction 
is given in them, there is vital need for schools which give 
to Japan the religious and ethical power it lacks. The fam- 
ous Aoyama G-akuin at Tokyo provides collegiate, theolog- 
ical, and preparatory training for six hundred students. An 
indication of its service to Christianity in Japan is seen in 



144 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

the recent gift of one of its former students of a building- 
costing $100,000. This and other schools in Japan must be 
strengthened for larger service. A great Union Christian 
University at Tokyo is planned in which we must bear our 
share. 

The Battle Flag 

When Admiral Togo led his fleet into action in the great 
naval battle with Russia in the Sea of Japan, he flung out 
this signal from the mast of his flagship — "The destiny of 
an empire." That same signal flag flies from the cross as 
it is raised in Japan. The destiny of the empire is at stake 
in a far larger sense than it ever was in the struggle with 
Russia. The whole future of Christianity in the Far East 
depends much on its success in Japan. 

Korea 

The story of Christianity in Korea reads like a chapter 
in the book of Acts. We would not feel a bit surprised to 
have Paul and Silas step into a typical Korean prayer meet- 
ing. One thing is sure, they would feel right at home. 
Christianity has had violent opposition, just as it did in the 
world in which the apostle Paul moved. But it has won 
some truly apostolic successes worthy to rank with the days 
of Pentecost. In thirty years 300,000 have been converted 
and joined the Christian Church — a remarkable record for 
a single generation in a nation whose total present popula- 
tion is only 15,000,000 ! Christianity has profoundly stirred 
the nation. It is confined to no class, but is a movement in the 
great mass of Korea's millions. Eager multitudes in all 
places listen when the gospel is preached, and churches are 
too small for the crowds. 

The Gateway to the East 

The location of Korea gives to the task of her thorough 
Christianization a high strategic value. It is located be- 
tween Japan and China. It is on the great highway across 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 145 

Asia by which the East is joined to the West by the Trans- 
Siberian Railroad. Seoul, the capital of Korea, is only 
forty-eight hours from Tokyo and forty-six from Peking. 
In times of peace it is only twelve days from London and 
seventeen days from New York. Korea is well fitted, not 
only by her geographical location but also by her religious 
temperament, to be a vital influence for Christian evangel- 
ization in Japan, China, and the rapidly developing Man- 
churia. Korea will play that role if Christianity wins a de- 
cisive victory there. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church already has a mem- 
bership of 25,000. There are five high schools and 159 ele- 
mentary schools. The evangelistic, educational, and hospital 
work must all be vigorously extended. The native church is 
already doing Herculean labors of evangelistic work and 
self-support. There is a crying need of schools, particularly 
in view of the government's refusal to permit the teaching 
of religion. Less than one tenth of the children of school 
age are in any regularly organized school. More children 
of Christian families are outside of school than in. Some 
imperative items of this advance are new churches, mission- 
aries, native teachers, and doctors. 

The Philippines 

When Admiral Dewey slipped into Manilla Bay in the 
twilight of that May morning twenty years ago the United 
States moved out into new world relationships and responsi- 
bilities. From that day to the present there has been a 
steady widening of the horizon of American interests, of 
which the participation of our country in the world-wide 
struggle of to-day is the culmination. We have been forced 
to think in world terms. The new day in history, ushered in 
by the taking of Manilla, has not meant what many feared, 
an era of 'imperialism," but it has meant the breakdown 
of old isolation and the acceptance of responsibilities of 
service, beyond our own shores. 



146 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

New Day foe the East 

The first of May, 1898, not only marks a new era in 
American thinking, but also a new era for the East. The 
American administration of the Philippines has introduced 




THE PHILIPPINES 
A school where the Orient may learn the essentials of democracy 

and demonstrated that a hitherto untried theory of colonial 
policy could work successfully. It has been a salient of 
democratic influence flung into the midst of Asia and has 
awakened longings for self-determination and larger degree 
of self-government among all peoples of Asia. ^^Why can't 
we have government like the Philippines T ' is a question 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 147 

which has echoed from island to island through all the 
Eastern Sea and over all the mainland. 

A Demonstkation School foe Asia 

The influence of American presence in the Philippines 
already demonstrates that it opens a new day in the kingdom 
of God. It affords a center from which both Christianity 
and democracy are swiftly carried to the Orient. Look at 
Manilla on the map and you will readily understand the 
description of it as ^^the Hub around which the wheel of 
Asia turns.'' What an opportunity it is, with our flag flying 
over eight millions of Orientals! When God's hour for all 
of Asia has com^e, we are standing in this strategic place, the 
very front yard ! It is an arena around which are ranged 
900,000,000 spectators in that Eastern world. What an op- 
portunity for influence, if in the Philippines we can show 
to that greatest audience which ever witnessed any spectacle 
a successful and vigorous Christianity going hand in hand 
with a beneficent democracy! It is small wonder that one 
who has spent years in the Philippines, Bishop W. F. Old- 
ham, has said: '^The crux of our missionary activities in 
Asia is in the Philippine Islands. If we fail to Christianize 
the Filipinos, we shall fail to Christianize Asia. If we suc- 
ceed in Christianizing the Filipinos, we shall succeed in 
all Asia." 

Toward Democracy 

For centuries under Spanish dominion the only spiritual 
watchword the Philippines knew was ' ' Backward Ho ! ' ' 
The American occupation has turned them right about face 
and set them marching toward democracy. The United 
States is pledged to give the Philippines complete rights of 
self-government as soon as the Filipinos show their fitness 
for it. They are not fit for it now and will not be able to 
maintain free republican institutions without the liberalizing 
influences of Protestant Christianity as well as the public 



148 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

schools. It is this program of an increasingly democratic 
government which onr government has set for the Philip- 
pines and which the Orient is watching, which makes so 
urgent a call for the Christianizing of the islands. 

Those who are nrging immediate independence for the 
Philippines are the ones who know least of the situation 
there. The educational process has not gone far enough. 
The people were ninety-five per cent illiterate only eighteen 
years ago and only 3,000,000 have been touched so far by the 
public school system, most of them, of course, being children. 
The whole body of the people have not yet had time to learn 
the rights of the individual. For the United States to step 
out immediately would simply be handing the people over to 
the exploitation of designing leaders, and such would not 
be the fulfillment of our responsibilities. If independence 
can be wisely granted in another decade, or two, a free and 
vital Christianity must supply the foundations and safe- 
guards of true democracy. 

Uncle Sam — Tel^stee 

It was a high ideal with which the United States 
started in the Philippines. In the words of President Me- 
Kinley: ^'The Philippines are ours, not to exploit but to 
develop, civilize, educate, and train in the science of self- 
government. This is the path of duty which we must follow 
or be recreant to a mighty trust committed to us. " We may 
well be proud that our nation has been true to that trust. 
We have given the Filipinos the best we have — science, edu- 
cation of the masses, intellectual and religious liberty, a just 
and liberal government in which they themselves have part. 
It is a record of progress ^'unexampled in the contact of 
any Western people with any part of Asia." ^ In eighteen 
3^ears have been brought about the changes of a century. 
Over 600,000 children are in American public schools, in 
which the English language is used. More Filipinos are 

* W. F. Oldham, India, Malaysia, and the Phili'ppines, p. 258. 




BASEBALL FOLLOWS THE FLAG 
One evidence of the American influence in the Philippines 



BB 




PREACHING IN THE STREETS OF SINGAPORE 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 149 

speaking English to-day than ever spoke Spanish at any one 
time, notwithstanding the fact that Spain was there three 
hundred and forty years, while the United States has been 
there only twenty years. 

After eleven years of American control the trade of 
the islands was three times as large as the highest figures 
under Spain. Improved agricultural methods, good roads 
and railroads, are vastly increasing material prosperity. 
Smallpox, formerly an annual scourge, has been completely 
wiped out. Cholera has virtually disappeared. The death 
rate in Manilla has been cut down fifty per cent since Amer- 
ican occupation. 

The Christian Achievement 

The Christian occupation of the Philippines has in 
many respects kept pace with other American achievements. 
The story of American Christian effort since our control of 
the islands has many unusual features, among which are the 
speed with which missionary work was begun when the door 
of opportunity opened; the remarkable growth of the 
Protestant churches and the spirit of cooperation which has 
prevailed from the beginning. Before the firing in the city 
of Manilla had ceased the missionary was on the ground. An 
evangelical union organized by the missionaries, determined 
that there should be no overlapping, competition, or wasted 
effort, divided the territory among different denominations. 
It was a heartening demonstration that the things which 
separate Christian bodies are not worth carrying eight 
thousand miles to sea. 

The response to evangelistic effort has been remarkable. 
The per cent of increase in church membership, in propor- 
tion to the number of people to be reached, has been greater 
in the Philippines than in any other foreign field. In the 
Methodist Church alone there are 48,000 members and 13,000 
unbaptized adherents, a community of over 60,000, and other 
churches have met success equally remarkable. The eager- 



150 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

ness with, which the inhabitants of the Islands received the 
gospel after the American control replaced the old Roman 
Church repression of freedom of thought and speech was 
intense and pathetic. That receptivity still characterizes 
the people. Twenty-five years ago the Bible was a closed 
book. To-day it has been translated into ten languages and 
over a million copies have been sold in the islands. 

Less than fifty per cent of the people may be considered 
as good Roman Catholics. Besides the number who are 
totally beyond the influence of the church, there are vast 
numbers of the natives who have never known any religion 
whatever except their primitive savagery. 

The Advaxce 

The principal activity in the Philippines is evangelistic. 
If one asks why there is such little i3rovision for primary 
and secondary education, the answer which may be proudly 
given is, ''The Stars and Stripes." The government is do- 
ing many things in the PhiliiDiDines which in other lands have 
to be done by the missions. The educational need is to sup- 
plement the government schools among people who are not 
yet reached by them, for only two fifths of the school popu- 
lation are as yet in school. Mission dormitories are needed 
for students in government schools in order to supply Chris- 
tian environment and influence, as the government allows no 
religious teaching. Cooperation in a much needed Christian 
university and a theological seminary has been promised. 
One of the most hopeful indications for large success in the 
Philippines is the number of young men of power and self- 
sacrificing spirit who have pressed into the ministry from 
the very beginning of missionary work. 

The minimum of church extension calls for 128 
churches and chapels, 69 native preachers, and 9 mission- 
aries. Our responsibility is for two and a half million peo- 
ple. Two medical stations in centers distant from Manilla, 
with physicians, are needed to minister to districts contain- 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 151 

ing a million and a quarter population without any medical 
attention. 

When a miner finds a ''paying streak" of metal he 
bends every etfort to follow it. The Philippines, for the 
short time missionary effort has been there, have proved one 
of the best ''paying streaks" in the history of Christianity. 

Malaysia 

A hungry world will listen with interest to at least one 
claim made for Malaysia : it could feed the globe. Perhaps 
there may be a slight touch of exaggeration to that claim as 
there has been to some other statements about real estate. 
Nevertheless, it is within easy hailing distance of the truth. 
It is not a guess or fervent hope, but the scientific appraisal 
of experts. Malaysia contains a million square miles of 
exceedingly fertile soil, tropical abundance, and frequent 
harvests. It can produce three yearly harvests of rice or 
any other tropical grain. Its resources have barely been 
touched. So there is some solid foundation for the belief 
that Malaysia, if her resources were properly developed, 
could invite the world into her dining room and say with 
calm assurance, "Ladies and gentlemen, be seated!" 

The What, Where and Who of Malaysia 

If the word "Malaysia" conveys any clearcut, definite 
meaning to you, you are one in a thousand and are entitled 
to pin the order of the Sons of Geography, First Class, on 
your breast. Malaysia is the composite name for a group 
of countries and islands in the Pacific, and has, in our minds, 
the same blurred outlines that a composite picture has. It is 
hopeless to try to dispel the fog without the light of a good 
map. Study the one on page 153 for a moment. Malaysia 
consists of the Malay Peninsula in the southeast of Asia, 
pointing like a forefinger down at the south pole, and the 
most wonderful group of islands in the world, including four 
large ones, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, and Java, and 



152 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

thousands of smaller ones. In this area there is a population 
of about 60,000,000. In spite of this large population, larger 
than that of all South America, half of it is packed so closely 
in Java that vast areas of the rest of Malaysia are very 
sparsely populated. 

Many flags wave over this group of islands. The Malay 
Peninsula, with many of the islands surrounding it, includ- 
ing Straits Settlements, of which Singapore is the metrop- 
olis, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea, belong to Great 
Britain. Holland owns Sumatra, Java, and many other 
islands, an empire of over forty million people, seven times 
outnumbering the population of Holland itself. Under both 
of these flags nominal rule over certain areas is still held by 
native chiefs and kings. 

A Land or Room Enough 

With the exception of Java there is plenty of room for 
more in Malaysia. It would seem that Java must soon be 
forced to hang out the sign ''Standing Room Only'' at all 
of her ports. Under the wise rule of the Dutch the popula- 
tion has increased in two centuries from 2,000,000 to 30,000,- 
000. There are 720 people to the square mile, more than in 
any country in Europe. If the other islands attain a density 
equal to Java, they will hold 720,000,000 instead of 50,000,- 
000 or 60,000,000. This gives some indication of the possi- 
bilities of growth and development of Malaysia. There is 
room for many millions, and large streams of immigration 
are already flowing from China and India. When asked how 
many Chinese he could encourage to come to Malaysia, the 
governor-general at Singapore answered in an off-hand way, 
' ' Fifty millions if you can spare them. ' ' 

Wonderland — Admission Free 

The whole area of Malaysia is a gigantic Bonanza 
Farm, whose possibilities and wealth the world is just begin- 
ning to learn. Large and varied crops are now produced 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 153 

and no limits can be set to the increase possible. Rice, sugar, 
cocoanuts, rubber, and coffee flourish. Immense oil fields 
have been found in Bali, the island next to Java. 

The Melting Pot of Asia 

The unique importance of Malaysia in the future of the 
Orient and the world lies mainly in two things — its strategic 
location and the vast immigration which is flowing to it. 




N 



SCALE OF Milts 

III I I. 

50 100 200 300 



MALAYSIA— THE MELTING POT OF ASIA 
Every year it receives hundreds of thousands of the overflow of China and India 



15i CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Singapore is the great center and metropolis of Ma- 
laysia, and one of the world's great pivot points of travel 
and trade. Yon cannot get from India or Europe to China or 
Japan or anywhere onto the Pacific ocean without passing 
through the narrow straits of Singapore, or else going so far 
east as to make the voyage almost impossible. The city of 
Singapore is the distributing point for all Asia and a 
transfer point for the world. It is probably the most cos- 
mopolitan city of the world. One may stand at a crowded 
street corner and count forty different nationalities passing 
within an hour. In that city of 300,000, over sixty-nine dif- 
ferent languages are spoken. Whatever is planted firmly in 
Singapore soon spreads out through the millions of Ma- 
laysia and through all the Orient. It is a nerve center of the 
Eastern world and a place of supreme vantage for Chris- 
tianity. 

Immigration is fast making not only a vast, developing 
civilization in Malaysia, but is making a new race. Over 
250,000 Chinese and 60,000 from India are coming to 
Malaysia every year and are rapidly interfusing with the 
Malays. It is the true melting pot of Asia. The city of 
Singapore at the present time is seventy-two per cent 
Chinese. Many of these Chinese become wealthy through 
trade. The great majority of the immigrants from China 
are laborers, and they are so much more industrious and 
thrifty than the native Malays that the future in Malaysia 
seems to belong to the Chinese. "Walter Weyel says : '^It is 
not impossible or even improbable that another century will 
find 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 Chinese in this unoccupied 
territory. ' ' ^ The foundations of a great populous civiliza- 
tion are being newly laid in this great region, presenting the 
opportunity of centuries to Christianity. 

The Christian Outlook 
If Malaysia is a wonderland of nature, it is in many re- 



Harpefs Magazine, July, 1918, p. 162. 



CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 155 

spects a wonderland of missionary adventure also. The 
Methodist Church is the only American church working in 
all of Malaysia. The opening of the work was a daring ven- 
ture of sheer faith which has been abundantly rewarded. 
The educational work has been stressed from the begin- 
ning. Already we have a self-supporting educational work 
that enrolls 7,500 pupils. The Anglo-Chinese School at 
Singapore, founded by Bishop W. F. Oldham when he was 
a missionary in Singapore, is the largest educational insti- 
tution outside of Japan in the Far East, having over 1,600 
4 pupils. Its graduates have been extremely influential. Sev- 
eral were leaders in the Chinese Revolution. 

A publishing house is self-supporting, furnishing books, 
Sunday school literature, tracts and Bibles in many lan- 
guages. Methodism, as the only expression of American 
Christian activity, stands very high in the confidence of all 
the governments and also in the trust and confidence of the 
people. 

In a little over twenty years a church community of 
6,000 has been gathered. The quality and interest of this 
community may be gauged by the fact that they are under- 
taking to raise one fourth of the total Centenary asking for 
Malaysia ! That group of 6,000 will raise $382,000. 

The most notable advance in the educational program is 
the development of the school in Singapore into a college. 
A circle with a radius of 1,200 miles would enclose 60,000,000 
people and in it there is not a single school of college grade. 
It affords an opportunity to set the educational standard 
for 60,000,000 people. Part of the money necessary is being 
raised on the field. One interested Chinaman has already 
made a gift of $100,000. An increase in the number of 
village schools is also planned. 

In connection with all these school centers there is large 
evangelistic opportunity. At present the appropriation 
furnishes only one missionary for each million of those for 
whom our church is responsible. The religions which Chris- 
tianity must meet and supplant are Mohammedanism, Bud- 



156 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

dhism, Hinduism, and the native paganism. Work among 
Mohammedans yields results much more readily at this tip 
end of Mohammedanism, as it were, than at the center in 
Turkey or North Africa. 

There is an urgent need of medical service. That con- 
stitutes the most promising approach to the Malay. ^'The 
easiest tunnel to the heart of Mohammedanism is the one 
which leads from the gate of a hospital." A hospital for 
Mohammedans at Singapore is proposed and nine hospitals 
on the various islands. The Dutch government has offered 
to supply three fourths of the cost, with the salary of one 
American doctor, nurses, and equipment. This means that 
for every dollar contributed from America nine will be con- 
tributed by the Dutch government. 

The Pacific Pkince 

In one of his finest missionary hymns Charles Wesley 
uses this ascription, ^'0 thou mild pacific Prince!" We 
must capitalize the word ' ' pacific ' ' and sing it with new con- 
viction. Jesus Christ must be the Pacific Prince. For the 
world's peace and progress, the new-world center in the 
Pacific must be under his mastery. 



Will the Russians build a government of, by, and for the people? 
On the answer to that question the hope of a liberal Europe hangs. — 
Ernest Poole, The Dark People. 

While we see to it that nothing allows the foreign missionary 
enterprise to suffer at this time, there is another problem of even greater 
dimensions, namely, re-evangelizing of Europe. — W, E. Orchard, The 
Outlook for Religion. 



CHAPTEE VII 

THE EEBUILDINa OF EUROPE 

The rebuilding' of Europe is the largest, most heart- 
breaking task which has ever awaited the hand and mind of 
man. The familiar pictures of French and Belgian women, 
sitting alone amid the desolate ruins of what had once been 
pleasant homes, are grim symbols of a broken, bereaved, 
and exhausted Europe bowed in the chaos left by the tornado 
of war. Millions of rough wooden crosses give to Northern 
France and Belgium the aspect of a vast cemetery where lie 
buried men and hopes and possibilities. Once fruitful fields 
and orchards are transformed into the barren crater of a 
volcano. Villages and cities with innumerable homes and 
churches have been leveled to shapeless ruins. Millions of 
maimed and blinded men are seeking to take up the tangled 
threads of life again under heavy handicaps. The large 
tasks of reconstruction must be undertaken with depleted 
human forces and wearied strength. 

The Havoc of War 

It is so large a task that the title of this chapter is in 
many senses a mockery. Europe will never be rebuilt. 
Much that has gone down to destruction can never be re- 
stored. The human harvest of war, a large part of the finest 
manhood of Europe, has been cut down and lost forever. 
Europe in its four years of war has lavishly spent not only 
its present wealth, but that of the past and future as well. 
A measureless mountain of debt and toil has been thrust for- 
ward to the shoulders of coming generations. 

Yet the war has left more than ruins. It has left an 
immortal chapter in the story of high-hearted valor, of un- 

159 



160 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

selfish sacrifice and true human greatness that will be one of 
the most priceless and fruitful legacies of the race for all 
ages to come. In the nations which have spent themselves 
so fully and ungrudgingly for the world's liberties, there 
have been disclosed undaunted heroism and capacity which 
will face the great reconstruction tasks as resolutely as they 
did the advancing armies. 

A New Europe 

While some things cannot be restored, many other things 
must not be rebuilt. The old structures of secret and in- 
triguing diplomacy, of selfish and grasping imperialism, of 
oppressive autocracy and militarism must never be set up 
again. 

The victory of the forces of democracy in the great war 
will be incomplete unless the nations of Europe replace old 
jealousies by new bonds of confidence and cooperation. 
Spiritual ideals of brotherhood and justice must supplant 
all materialistic worship of power. It is becoming increas- 
ingly clear to millions of men that only such ideals worked 
out into actual institutions will ever prevent another war 
like the present one or worse. It is a farseeing, practical 
statesmanship which proclaims at this hour regarding the 
reconstruction of Europe, ^^ Unless the Lord build the house, 
they labor in vain that build it.'' 

Spiritual Foundations for Reconstruction 

In every field of life Europe has great tasks of recon- 
struction awaiting. Great changes in the political life of 
every nation are bound to follow the upheaval, with the crea- 
tion of new states and new forms and methods of govern- 
ment. Education of every kind will be profoundly atfected. 
In the industrial world many look for the most far-reach- 
ing results of the war. It cannot be doubted that the idea of 
democracy, which has been so much in the thought of all 
Europe for the years of the war, will be rigorously ap- 



THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 161 

plied to industry and the power and rewards of labor greatly 
increased. In religious thinking and activity equally great 
transformations will occur. Nothing is surer than that the 
new order will place the free Protestant church beside the 
free school as essential to the achievement of democracy. A 
free church with vigorous spiritual ideals and life must enter 
into the foundations of the new order in Europe to make it 
permanent and safe. 

Methodism in Continental Europe 

It is not with any small spirit of making proselytes or 
competing with other churches that a free Protestantism 
looks at Europe to-day. It is, rather, with the desire to 
render assistance to the forces already working there to lay 
a true moral and spiritual foundation for national life. 
America has proved herself a minister of mercy in Europe 
and a military ally of the forces of democracy. We would 
seek for her also a place of service in completing the victory 
of democracy by strengthening the spiritual forces essential 
to its safety. 

The work of Methodism in Europe, in eleven countries, 
has furnished it with a unique equipment and opportunity 
for service at this hour. It is the only Protestant church 
without national affiliations working over all this war-af- 
fected territory. Through the international scope and char- 
acter of its European membership and organization it holds 
a providential relationship to much of the future religious 
life of Europe. 

No survey of the European fields and its needs could, of 
course, be made. It is rather difficult to survey a whirlwind 
in action. It is clear, however, that there exists an unprec- 
edented opportunity to minister to the varied needs, phys- 
ical, educational, and spiritual, of some of the stricken coun- 
tries of Europe. Methodism is so placed in relation to these 
great needs that they constitute an immediate responsibility 
which cannot be evaded. 



162 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Under Three Flags 

Among the countries of Continental Europe which are 
opening opportunities for service of striking character, are 
Russia, Italy, and France. The conditions in each of these 
countries are vastly different, hut even a slight examination 
of them will give an indication of the wide opportunity for 
ministry that lies ahead of a free Protestant Christianity in 
Europe. 

Russia 

Russia has become the world's rampant question mark 
and will be so for a generation to come. Both history and 
fiction fail to furnish a parallel to the two revolutions of 
1917 by which the whole political and social order of Russia 
was overturned, the course of the war changed, and the gov- 
ernment placed in the hands of what looked from the outside 
like a workingmen's debating society. Russia has won for 
herself, during the progress of this most amazing revolution, 
every possible attitude on the part of the rest of the world, 
from the most extravagant applause and admiration to the 
bitterest hatred and accusations of treachery. Probably no 
nation has ever had to deal at one time with such great dis- 
turbing undertakings as Russia has had in the last two years. 
In the first place, she has had to engage in the greatest war 
in the history of the world, maintaining alone a vast front 
of twelve hundred miles for nearly three years. Second, 
Russia has had the greatest political revolution of modern 
times, perhaps also of ancient or modern times. She has 
swung from a cruel and dark autocracy to a government 
wholly in the hands of the working class. Third, she has 
undergone a social revolution which is the greatest social up- 
heaval of this or any age. Fourth, she is in the midst of a 
striking religious revolution, which has not received so much 
attention as the political and social revolution, but which has 
already brought tolerance to faiths and sects persecuted for 
centuries and which has great possibilities for the religious 
future of Russia. 



THE EEBUILDING OF EUROPE 163 

While much of the movement of this turbulent whirlpool 
in Russia cannot be rightly interpreted at present, in two 
respects it is clearly to be seen that the course of events has 
been inevitable. One is that the great revolution was the sure 
fruit of a blind and brutal tyranny. The other is that a safe 
democracy cannot exist among a people unprepared for it. 
The world has never been treated to a more conclusive 
demonstration that a democracy without sure foundations in 
universal education and moral and spiritual enlightenment 
is a menace to the world. The collapse of Russia, her failing 
the allied nations at a crucial hour in the great struggle, and 
the internal weakness of her improvised democracy, have 
shown with terrible emphasis the havoc that may be wrought 
by democracy without the essential conditions of success. 

The Fruit of Tyeanny 

The revolution which blew the autocracy of the Tsar to 
atoms was the inevitable result of a repressive tyranny. Its 
coming was as sure as the explosion of a steam boiler which 
has no outlet. However disappointing the year's collapse of 
Russia as an ally and the feebleness of the Bolsheviki 
government was, it must not be forgotten that the freeing 
of the one hundred and sixty-four millions of Russia from 
the iron heel of despotism is one of the greatest results of the 
war and one of the largest single steps ever taken in the 
world's march to freedom. A few months before the crash 
came the Tsar's brother wrote a warning letter to Nicholas 
in which he said, ^'The time is by when nine tenths of the 
people can be treated as manure to grow a few roses. ' ' This 
handwriting on the wall was disregarded, but the rising tor- 
rent of revolution soon proved the truth of the words. The 
liberation of Russia has come in response to that same divine 
voice which first sounded when the Israelites were oppressed 
in Egypt, ^ ^ Let my people go ! " 

The Dark Ages in Russia have existed up until the pres- 
ent time. The autocracy of Russia was blind, untouched by 



164 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

any reason whatever at times and securing few of the results 
desired. The old spirit of the Russian government is well 
exhibited by the system of exile to Siberia for even minor 
political offenses, and the treatment of the Jews. In the 
words of Professor E. A. Ross, ''The government lit no 
lamps for the people, nor would it allow others to do so 
freely. ' ' ^ The workmen were held down with a hard cruelty 
long since abandoned in western Europe. One third of the 
agricultural land of Russia was in the hands of 110,000 
nobles, out of a population of over 160,000,000. The whole 
social system was designed to concentrate the good things of 
life in the hands of the few at the top of the social pyramid 
and distribute all the burdens possible to the shoulders of the 
common people at the bottom. This oppressive result was 
secured by the cooperation of the absolute power of the 
autocracy, the subservient spirit of office holders, a captive 
church, ' ' safe ' ' teaching in what schools there were, by class 
distinctions in the law code, the tax system weighing heaviest 
on the poor, the police, and spies. 

Unprepared for Democracy 

The result of these centuries of oppression has been that 
when the despotic yoke of the Tsar was overthrown, the peo- 
ple of Russia were entirely unprepared to maintain a se- 
cure democracy. The government kept the people in dark- 
ness, and now that the despotism is overthrown, the people 
do not understand the nature of liberty or the necessity of 
making adjustments by law. ' ' They are too ignorant to per- 
ceive the fallacies of agitators who urge them to take what 
they want now. ' ' ^ Eighty-three per cent of the population 
above nine years were reported illiterate in 1908, and this 
figure is still given even by Russian professors.^ It is not 
surprising that in its new found liberty Russia has been 

^ Ross, Russia In Upheaval, p. 217. 
^ lUd., p. 16. 
^lUd., p. 112. 



THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 165 

rearing and plunging like her own wild horses on the 
Steppes. ' ' To look for a national consciousness, ' ' says Prof. 
Ross, ^^ among people who have no mental image of Russia, 
never saw a map of the world, and could not locate their 
country on such a map, would be folly. ''^ This unpre- 
paredness for democracy has been a tragedy of the gravest 
sort in the present world struggle. It demonstrates the 
serious obstacles to world democracy which exist in the 
ignorance and moral weakness upon the part of multitudes 
who desire to participate in it. There can be no doubt of the 
truth of the forcible words of Bishop Bashford, ^'Had 
Protestantism spent forty millions of dollars in missionary 
work in Russia during the last forty years, Russian democ- 
racy would stand the crisis firmly and would be worth forty 
billions of dollars in terminating the war. " 

What of the Future? 

It would be a foolhardy prophet who would risk his 
reputation by trying to foretell the exact course of events 
in Russia for even a few weeks. 

''What do you think about Russia!'' one man asked an- 
other recently on a street car. 

''I haven't seen a paper since an hour ago," was the 
discreet answer he received. 

All predictions about Russia must be made with some- 
thing of the same undogmatic discretion. 

The eyes of the world are eagerly focused on Russia 
to-day. Vital questions press for an answer : How long will 
the present Bolsheviki^ government stand! What success 
will the allied nations have in saving Russia from complete 
domination by Germany? Can a famine and disease, involv- 
ing the lives of millions, be averted? But amid all the com- 

^ Ross, Russia In Upheaval, p. 115. 

''The name "Bolshevik" means "member of a majority." The aim 
of the Bolshevik party was the establishment of a state in which the 
workers control. The Sovyet is a council of delegates chosen by groups 
of workers. 



166 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

plex maze of possibilities, one thing stands out clearly. If 
Russia is ever to emerge out of her present upheaval as a 
safe, solvent, and just democracy, there must develop within 
it the forces which have made democracy free and safe any- 
where, universal education, enlightenment, and vigorous 
moral and spiritual ideals. Upon the free Christian 
churches of the world rests the pressing responsibility of 
bringing aid so that these saving forces may be released and 
developed in the democracy of Russia. 

The Present Opportunity 

The throne of the Tsars is not the only thing which has 
been blown sky-high in the revolutionary explosion. Old 
doors of exclusiveness have been lifted off their hinges and 
forbidding barriers razed to the ground. In many respects 
Russia presents a unique opportunity in Christian history to 
help shape the foundations of a new national life among a 
great people coming out of oppression into liberty. It is 
an opportunity of service not only to Russia, but to the whole 
world. There are many foundations for the hope of a strong 
Christian democracy in Russia if the necessary leadership 
and assistance are forthcoming. 

The Russian Character 

The national Russian character possesses many and 
strong virtues which promise an immense contribution to the 
world. They are virtues intimately associated with Chris- 
tianity and will undoubtedly prove an immense power in the 
establishment of a spirit of brotherhood and sympathy 
throughout the world. No people have such a quick impulse 
of sympathy for a fellow man as the Russians. They mani- 
fest a genuine Christian spirit by a hundred tokens. Trav- 
elers report that early in the war peasants would give all 
their stock of food to the passing Polish and Jewish refugees. 
The millions who fled into Russia before the advancing 
German armies met with wonderful kindness and generosity. 



THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 



167 



They are a prevailing peaceful people. Russian militarism is 
an alien thing of Prussian origin settled upon the people. 
No more democratic people by their nature and long habits 




AFTER THE WAR— WHAT ? 

The countries of Europe in which the Methodist Episcopal Church has work are indicated in 
white 



of life exists than the great mass of Russia. Nor is there 
any great people more idealistic. Observers have always 
been struck with the serious-mindedneas and depth of the 



168 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

people. Whether this is to be ascribed, as is commonly done, 
to the savage Russian winter or not, it is a trait of character 
of the largest possibilities. Their characteristic of striking 
orderliness has not failed them in the turbulent days of 
revolution.^ In spite of all the upheaval, the period of seven 
years after the French Revolution was far worse in every 
respect than that through which Russia is now passing. The 
Russians are great in patience. It is often predicted that 
the Russians will be the first to forgive after the war is over. 
These racial characteristics form a large basis for hope of a 
great democratic nation. 

The New Eka in the Russian Church 

The State Church of Russia, the Greek Orthodox Cath- 
olic Church, has been unchanged through the centuries, being 
occupied far more with ritual than with teaching. Un- 
like our Protestant churches it has striven neither to in- 
struct nor to develop attitudes of the will. It has been the 
servant of the autocratic government. But it has shared in 
the democratic revolution and is at present undergoing a 
transformation which holds large possibilities. Religious 
toleration has at last been achieved and the long era of per- 
secution and exclusiveness ended. All religions now stand 
on an equality. The Orthodox Church itself is undergoing 
a process of democratization and a break with the old 
autocratic method of church government has been made. 
Old corruptions are being corrected and many signs of spir- 
itual quickening are at hand, such as improving the parish 
life of the churches, the larger use of preaching. This situ- 
ation points the way to the opportunity of influencing with 
the principles and spirit of evangelistic Christianity that 
great ecclesiastical establishment, one of the largest in the 
world, with 115,000,000 members. It will require wise and 
sympathetic action. 



Fred P. Haggard, Journal of Race Development, January, 1918, p. 291. 



THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 169 

Methodism in Russia 

Methodism is already located in Petrograd in a mission 
which has made substantial progress under grave handicap 
under the old autocratic regime. In the changed situation 
which is presented in Russia that effort must be strength- 
ened and enlarged. In the field of education there is a pecu- 
liarly large opportunity. The planting of some strong 
schools will be eagerly welcomed and will afford a strategic 
center of influence and be one of the most effective ap- 
proaches to the whole religious problem of Russia. Some of 
the greatest weaknesses of Russia have been the lack of 
standards, intellectual, economic, and moral. Christian edu- 
cation of a broad and modern type under free and vigorous 
Protestant auspices can do much in strengthening the 
foundations of the new Russia now rising on the wreck of 
the Bolsheviki regime. A close relation to young Russia is 
the line of action dictated by America's pledge to Demo- 
cracy, Humanity, and Freedom. 

France 

The strains of *^The Marseillaise" are resounding 
throughout the world. In a very real sense France has 
saved the world, and the largest part of the world looks to 
France with feelings of reverent devotion and gratitude. 
Those feelings on the part of America have already found 
expression both in military comradeship in arms and in 
large ministries of mercy, and will continue to find expres- 
sion after the war is over. The debt which civilization owes 
to France can never be reckoned and never be paid. The 
heroic valor of her soldiers and the indomitable spirit and 
cheerful sacrifice on the part of all her people will furnish 
inspiration to the whole human race for ages to come. The 
United States will surely regard the opportunity of assist- 
ing in the rebuilding of France as a high privilege. The 
comradeship of the two nations now expressed in arms must 
be continued after the war in works of reconstruction. 



170 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

To-MOKROw's Tasks 

That rebuilding, as elsewhere in Europe, will take many 
forms, and among them and interpenetrating all will be the 
religious. A new spirit has been liberated in France dur- 
ing the war, a quickening of the spiritual life of the nation. 
The witnesses of that new spirit are present in a thousand 
forms. Just how that spirit will affect the institutionalized 
religion of France cannot be definitely predicted, but it is 
evident that it otfers an increased receptivity to a free spir- 
itual message. 

To the established French work of Methodism, the pres- 
ent and immediate days to come present two urgent calls, 
which are closely related. The first is to bear an earnest 
part in the great task of helping France rebuild, particularly 
in caring for her orphans and educating them, thus conserv- 
ing her priceless human wealth. The second is to minister to 
the awakened spiritual aspiration and life. All Europe, 
along with France, greatly needs a statement of Christ which 
shall be modern and vital and which shall make a direct 
appeal to the mind and heart. 

The Spirit of Approach 

Methodism approaches the opportunity of service in 
France with humility, reverence, and gratitude. The large 
spiritual ministry which France has given and is giving to 
the United States in her heroic and sacrificing devotion to 
liberty, justice, and humanity has uplifted our own national 
life to a degree beyond computation. That we shall never 
forget. In grateful spirit we would seek to bring to France, 
so largely without definite religious connections, a Christian 
evangel unfettered by ecclesiasticism, which shall strengthen 
her own spiritual life. The religious situation in France 
is peculiar. There is a socialistic section of the nation which 
is strongly antireligious and therefore anti-Catholic. The 
great middle class, which takes in four fifths of the French 



THE REBUILDING OP EUROPE 171 

people, from peasant to intellectual, have very little relation 
to any religious institution save that they have been bap- 
tized and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. The 
French Protestant Church, though influential out of propor- 
tion to its numbers, has not been an aggressive propagating 
force. The strong anticlerical movement which resulted in 
the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church a few 
years ago left large numbers entirely outside of the influence 
of any form of Christianity. At the time of the disestablish- 
ment Rome claimed at the most only ^ve or six million loyal 
Catholics. At the present time the French man or woman 
whose religious impulses have been quickened by the war, 
has practically no choice between agnosticism on the one 
hand and a form of Roman faith on the other.^ 

That the great unchurched masses of France accord a 
ready hearing to the message of evangelical Christianity has 
been amply demonstrated by the success of the Methodist 
evangelistic work before the war, in the Savoy district. 
Many churches were planted and a promising orphanage 
work developed. The present activity is centered on the 
orphanage work at Grenoble, where an important service is 
being rendered, helping to meet two pressing needs of 
France, the preservation and education of her children and 
the problem of feeding her people after the war. At Grenoble 
our church is conducting an agricultural school for soldiers ' 
orphans, in connection with which a farm is operated. It is 
the nucleus for a great new agricultural and industrial 
school which will be of large service. In this connection the 
important war orphans' work of the Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society of the Methodist Church must not be over- 
looked. For this purpose $45,000 has been appropriated, of 
which $30,000 will be used for building an orphanage. 

After the war the evangelistic opportunity will be even 
larger. The new bonds which unite France and the United 
States, the service of the Red Cross and Y. M. C. A., in addi- 



Tyler Dennett, World Outlook, November, 1917. 



172 CHEISTIAX CRUSADE FOE DEMOCEACY 

tion to the awakened religious spirit of the French, all mark 
a new day of opportunity. Plans for cooperation with the 
French Protestant Church are already being made. 

Italy 

The war has affected the Methodist work in Italy in two 
diverse ways. On the one hand, it has destroyed many 
churches in the battle zone of north Italy, taken toll of many 
of the members and leaders and crippled the work in every 
part of the country. On the other hand, it has greatly in- 
creased the prestige and prosjDects of our work by disclosing 
Methodism as a national force of high patriotic feeling and 
vital influence. There is no doubt that Methodism has per- 
manently gained increased confidence and good will, which 
will lead to larger service in future years. At the Annual 
Conference in Florence, in April. 1918, half of the min- 
isterial forces were appointed to service in the armies. Many 
of the preachers have been decorated for valor in action. 
The Italian government has recognized the value of Italian 
Methodism in the official appointment of Methodist chap- 
lains in the army. 

The Methodist work and program in Italy appeals 
strongly to the liberals of the country. The authority and 
prestige of the Vatican have been materially lessened during 
the war by the failure of the Pope to take a stand with Italy 
on the moral issues of the war. and already there are many 
indications of an increased receptivity after the war toward 
a free evangelical Christianity. 

LixES OF Advaxce 

Methodism is on a firm foundation in Italy with a col- 
lege, publishing house, schools, and churches. Perhaps the 
most strategic advance now planned is the completion of the 
Collegio at Rome for which a magnificent site has been pur- 
chased on ]\Ionte Mario overlooking Saint Peter's Cathedral. 
This will insure an evangelical Christian leadership for the 



THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 173 

work in the whole kingdom and will extend and increase the 
already remarkable work of the Collegio. Another educa- 
tional project now in successful operation which must be 
strengthened for increased influence is the industrial school 
in Venice. The opportunity for these institutions is many 
times greater to-day than it was before the war, because the 
government is too poor to maintain its school system and so 
will welcome all institutions that desire to render service to 
Italy. 

In addition to these educational projects there is need 
for extending the evangelistic work of the churches both in 
men and money for the increased opportunity of the coming 
years. 

Italy and the United States are standing closer to- 
gether than ever before. The flag of Italy, so little known 
here a few years ago, is becoming almost as well known as 
the Union Jack or the tri-color of France. It is coming to 
be a dearly loved flag as well, all over our land. It is a 
highly favorable day in which to express our feeling of 
alliance with Italy in ways that will strengthen her national 
life and democratic ideals. 

Othee Nations 

In many other countries Methodism is bearing the 
strain and stress of war and will face large tasks with 
slender resources after it is over. We are in Bulgaria, and 
responsible for Serbia and Roumania, wholly unoccupied by 
Protestantism. What needier field in which to play the 
good Samaritan than these three storm-tossed Balkan 
countries? In Switzerland, in Scandinavia, in Denmark, 
our work has undoubtedly suffered under the strain. And 
finally — 

Geemany 

What can be said of Germany! How can any one pic- 
ture the suffering of German Methodists, or of those of 



174 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

Austria? "Wliat the state of the Methodist Church in 
Germany, once so vigorous and promising, will be after the 
war cannot be foreseen at present. But two considerations 
must be kept in mind. One is that the great ideal of brother- 
hood in Christ never needed such large and compelling state- 
ment as it does to-day and will need in the days that follow 
the war. No force will be so effective in making that ideal 
a realit}" as the church founded on that ideal. European 
Methodism, located on both sides of the firing line, will be- 
come immediately effective in the direly needed ministry of 
reconciliation when the firing ceases. 

The other consideration to be remembered in connection 
with German and Austrian Methodism is its great possible 
service to the growth of democracy within those countries. 
It is a growth for which we long and pray. The future peace 
and happiness of the world will be largely affected by the 
establishment of democracy within the German empire, and 
no influence will work so mightily for that result as a free 
and vigorous evangelical Christianity uncontrolled by the 
state, boldly declaring the freedom and inalienable rights 
of every man as a child of God. For that reason we may 
earnestly pray that Methodism among the Central Powers 
may wax strong in numbers and influence. 



It is the time of times to do something that reminds people that 
we believe our religion. Things that are impossible with men have ever 
been the most attractive things for Christ. — John R. Mott. 

England possessed a superb architect of genius, Sir Christopher 
Wren. He prepared a magnificent design for rebuilding the city of 
London which he would have made the noblest and most magnificent city 
in the world. The central idea was Saint Paul's Cathedral, and Wren 
meant it to be approached by a stately colonnade leading up from what 
is now Ludgate Hill. All the rest of the city was to be grouped around. 
The king and Parliament accepted the plans, but it was a melancholy 
fact that the scheme was thrust aside by the haste of the commercial 
interest to begin rebuilding, and by the unwillingness of the citizens to 
cooperate for the common good. The supreme moment was lost. Sel- 
fishness rose and spoiled the picture. The old London, with its narrow- 
ness, its crookedness, its inconvenience, remained as it will be with us to 
the end. Shall the new world after the war perpetuate the crookedness, 
the narrowness of the world before the war? — W. Blaclcshaw. 

Never can the church say to any young missionary, "Young man, sit 
down!" when the country is calling its young soldiers to enlist. Never 
can the church be content to become parochial when the mind of the 
country is becoming international. When the thoughts of all living men 
are widened by the process of the suns, then is the very time to widen 
the endeavor of the Christian Church. — W. H, P. Faunce. 



CHAPTEE VIII 
A WOELD PEOGEAM 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has gotten her dates 
mixed in a divine confusion. Coming to the one hundredth 
anniversary of the beginning of Methodist missions in 1819, 
she is planning to celebrate, not the first hundred years, but 
the next hundred. Forgetting the things which are behind, 
not unmindful of their sublimities, but stirred by their obli- 
gations, she has set her face like a flint to rear as a centen- 
nial observance the only monument worthy of those who 
have gone out to the world with Christ's message and of the 
Christ who led them. That monument is to be a world-wide 
foundation for Christ's kingdom. 

Two things there are in the heritage of Methodism 
which commit the church irrevocably to a new and deter- 
mined pressing of her world warfare. 

The Obligation of History 

The providential success of the first century of Meth- 
odist missions lays upon the church the high obligation of 
building worthily on that noble foundation. In no other con- 
nection is the paradox more true that ''We must be greater 
than our fathers in order to be equal to them. ' ' The begin- 
ning of the first hundred years of Methodist missions saw 
one man, a Negro, John Stewart, at work among the Wyan- 
dot Indians in Ohio. Not an inspiring figure, surely, and 
yet, making his way through the tangled forests, he was the 
trail-blazer of a world-movement. The first missionary to a 
foreign land soon followed in his train, Melville Cox^ — whose 

177 



178 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

frail body soon burned itself out with fever, but whose grave 
in the African sands has made one spot of that great con- 
tinent forever American, from which he still calls in his dy- 
ing exhortation, ^'Let a thousand fall, before Africa be 
given up!" 

The close of the century sees the church set full in the 
stream of modern life, building the evangel of Christ into 
the life of thirty-four countries. It is raising a vigorous 
native church, which is itself carrying the propaganda of 
the Kingdom in the Far East, in Africa, in India, and South 
America. The Board of Foreign Missions has 1,071 mis- 
sionaries and 9,107 native workers. The Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society has 500 missionaries and 4,003 native 
workers. The total staff, therefore, is 14,680, of whom about 
nine out of every ten are native workers. The vitality of 
the native church in mission lands may be fairly judged by 
the fact that for every three dollars contributed by the Home 
Base, about one dollar is collected on the field. When we re- 
member that most of these fields are lands of dire poverty, 
the showing is remarkable. On the foreign field there are 
442,765 members, 2,516 churches and chapels, 106 high 
schools and colleges, 36 theological and biblical schools, 
2,853 primary and other schools, and 49 hospitals. There 
are to-day 7,440 Sunday schools with an enrollment of 
346,793. The potential strength which this Sunday school 
host means to the church of to-morrow cannot be meas- 
ured. 

The Obligation of Democratic Ideals 

In a day of democratic striving the world over, a 
church born of democratic ideals, a force for social progress 
in its very birth hour, and during all its historj^ a church of 
the common people, cannot escape the responsibility of 
world-service for democracy. In the democratic awakening 
in England in the eighteenth century the Methodist revival 
under Wesley played a vital part. The English historian 



A WORLD PROGRAM 179 

Lecky reckons the Methodist revival as one of the greatest 
forces for social progress in the century, ^'The democracy 
of the Methodist Movement, ' ' in the words of a recent his- 
torian, ''was founded upon the eternal possibility before 
every man. ' ' The religious revival preceded and made pos- 
sible in large degree the steady march of democratic pro- 
gress in England which went on for a hundred years, secur- 
ing the extension of the right to vote, the protection of 
workers in factories, and child labor laws. And now that the 
democratic struggle is being fought out on a world scale, 
Methodism must answer the call for service and leadership 
in that struggle for which her birthright and experience 
have so splendidly fitted her. 

A Vision of Wokld Need 

In the chapters of this book we have lifted up our 
eyes to the fields to whose emancipation our church is 
pledged. We have scanned the horizon of China, India, 
Japan, and Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, Africa, 
Europe, and Latin America. We have seen men of different 
colors, but every color takes on a darker hue from the 
shadow of Christless night in which the peoples sit. We 
have listened to a Babel of languages, but the language of 
human need is one.- It is a weary world, needing many 
things, but needing nothing so desperately as it needs Christ. 
We have gone in imagination through wide-open doors, and 
yet the figure of a door is too passive and mechanical. It 
is not so much a world of open doors that stretches out be- 
fore us as a world of imploring hands. It is a darkened 
world, where over one half the human race cannot read or 
write a word of any language ; a sufiFering world where one 
half the human race is without a knowledge of medicine, 
surgery, hygiene, or sanitation. 

It is a receptive world. H. G. Wells is a true seer when 
he reports: ''All mankind is seeking God. There is not a 
nation nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged 



180 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

at this moment by the Spirit of God in them toward the dis- 
covery of God. ' ' ^ 

For this hour, the Centenary World Program of Meth- 
odism is the organized strategy of the love of Christ. It 
must stir the church as the voice of God. 



The Chukch's Need of a Woeld Crusade 

We have thought of this program as one for the salva- 
tion of the world, and so it is. But let us not deceive our- 
selves into thinking that that is all. It is a necessary under- 
taking for the salvation of the church. The hour has struck 
when the Christian Church must get on with the business of 
establishing the kingdom of God by an aggressive warfare 
in deadly earnest if she is to hold the allegiance of men. In 
her total task she has what the world so direly needs, ^'The 
moral equivalent of war ' ' ; and only as she utilizes all her 
resources for that one tremendous objective can she lead a 
world which has become accustomed to a war footing. 
There is no other idea large enough to serve ^^as a moral 
equivalent to war" than the adventure of applying Chris- 
tianity to a desperately needy world. All the ''war vir- 
tues," farsighted planning, quick initiative, unselfish cour- 
age, disciplined leadership, obedience, e^pri^ de corps and 
effective cooperation, may find permanent and satisfying 
place in the crusade of the kingdom of God. The task to 
which the church calls men must be large and daring enough 
to make room for these virtues, else it will not appear worth 
while. For the war has taught us what we had almost for- 
gotten — that a great response can always be brought out by 
a great appeal. The capacity for heroism in the average 
man and woman when confronted by a really big demand has 
been almost a revelation. Merely dabbling with its task will 
rally no army to the standard of the church. The church 



H. G. Wells, God the Invisible King. 



A WORLD PROGRAM 181 

must be saved by her faith, a militant and aggressive faith in 
the world-kingdom of God, to which she dedicates her all. 

The Christian Spirit of Adventure 

A program of world-evangelization and uplift such as 
Methodism has before her will recover what is essential in 
Christianity and what has possessed the strongest appeal 
to men since the days of Christ, the spirit of adventure. The 
church is an institution, of course, but Christianity is more 
than that. It is an adventure, an enterprise, a crusade. ^^It 
was intended for the arena ; it is helmed and girded for the 
quick encounter, it sends out its knights and men-at-arms to 
battle. ' ' ^ The moral and spiritual authority which we crave 
for Christ's church, the power to command the enthusiasm 
and service of men will be hers when she flings herself into 
and holds before them a great positive offensive movement. 
Mr. Clutton-Brock, in words that bite, has described the 
source of much of the weakness of organized Christianity. 

* ^ Christianity, ' ' he says, *^has lost its power of coher- 
ence, its joy, its power of laughter, because it has been 
merely on the defensive. There we stand, entrenched in our 
carefully fortified lines which cover the narrow territory we 
are holding on to, without the strategic initiative that goes 
with victory.'' ^ <'^e are afraid — so many of us — to take 
risks and make history, afraid to think imperially in the 
cause of the Kingdom of God, afraid of all the reconstruc- 
tion and enterprise that must go with war. We rely upon 
apology, and dreading the disasters which might follow 
frontal attacks upon deeply entrenched evils, we strafe them 
from a distance with long-rang^ fire. Timid and divided 
counsels, which would bring certain failure on the Somme or 
at Arras, first limit and then wreck our scheme for progress 
and reform. We have grown contented, or are only feebly 



"■ P. B. MacNutt, The Church in the Furnace, p. 17. 
=^ A. Clutton-Brock, The Ultimate Faith. 



182 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

discontented, witli onr limitations, and year after year we 
settle down to onr trenches for another winter. ' ' ^ 

Only one course is large enough for the emergency — 
to do boldly what Jesns did, put the Kingdom and the Cross 
in the very center of our message and life. And the Cross in 
terms of modern life means getting under the world 's need 

and burden with a force strong enough to lift it. 

i 

The Favoring Conditions To-day for the World Program 

The unfavorable conditions are far more easily seen 
perhaps. The great preoccupation — the war — with its long 
train of financial and other calls which must be swiftly and 
fully met, makes the task larger and harder in many ways. 
But one who enters deeply into the temper of the times can- 
not fail to feel that there are great and new forces at work 
in our national life which make it a day of unprecedented 
opportunity for initiating a wide and sacrificial missionary 
undertaking which has a truly great challenge and promise. 

A Day of Large Things 

It is a day of large things. The leadership of the world 
is thinking and acting in larger terms than ever before. The 
scale on which resources are being mobilized in the countries 
at war, the new standards of thinking in military circles, in 
scientific realms, in the financial world, all present a tre- 
mendous challenge to forsake the old standards forever and 
to lift the program of the Kingdom into new terms greater 
and more expansive than those of all other organizations. 
In our first year of war the United States gave to humani- 
tarian and Christian objects for which great campaigns 
were conducted, $330,000,000. In no previous year had 
there ever been given to corresponding objects more than 
$30,000,000. The Red Cross in its first campaign asked for 
$100,000,000. It received $120,000,000. The Y. M. C. A. 
asked for $35,000,000 in November, 1917; it received over 

^ F. B. MacNutt, The Church in the Furnace. 



A WOELD PROGRAM 183 

$50,000,000. People are accustomed to thinking in large 
dimensions ; old standards of measuring and thinking have 
been abandoned. In addition to that, while Christian peo- 
ple in the United States are in the war whole-heartedly to see 
it through to final victory, there is an increasing longing for 
something constructive rather than merely destructive, that 
builds rather than batters down. And in the words of 
Bishop Bashford, *'The Centenary World Program is the 
most constructive and statesmanlike project before the 
world to-day." 

A Day Favorable to American World-Influence 

When President Wilson delivered his message to Con- 
gress at its assembling, December 4, 1917, the telegraph 
lines and cables of the whole world were connected up and 
held in readiness, so that his words might be flashed to every 
corner of the earth without the loss of an unnecessary 
second. That network of wires running out to the waiting 
millions of the earth is a symbol of the new position of 
America to-day. President Wilson has become the enthusi- 
astically accepted spokesman for the Allied nations. In the 
words of Stephane Lauzanne, editor Le Matin, Paris, 
'^President Wilson's addresses are the gospel of the Allied 
cause. In his message of April 2, as well as in those that fol- 
lowed it, the Allies found the echo of their own sentiments, 
of their own will, their own hopes, strengthened in volume 
by distance.''^ From England Frederic Harrison writes: 
^ ^ The American President has put the whole case of the war 
into unanswerable words. The material and moral forces 
of the Old World seem to be passing over to the New World. 
Mr. Wilson is now the most powerful ruler the world has 
seen for at least one hundred years.'' ^ 

Never was there throughout the world so favorable a 
predisposition for whatever moral and spiritual leadership 
America may give. The embarking of the United States in 

^ New York Times, March 10, 1918. 

' The Fortnightly Review, February, 1918. 



184 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

an unselfish war for the rights of mankind — a war in which 
it has nothing to gain save the privilege of establishing the 
victory of simple faith, humanity, and justice^ — is a unique 
spectacle in history. The nation's rally to that war has 
brought a new glory to Old Glory — the brightest that has 
ever shone on its folds. The flag has become the revered 
symbol of the consecration of a great people to an unselfish 
world task of liberation. '^We have no selfish ends to serve. 
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indem- 
nities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacri- 
fices we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham- 
pions of the rights of mankind. ' ' ^ Up to May 15, 1918, the 
United States had advanced to the Allied nations $5,763,- 
850,000, and the total will increase every month. 

What does this new position of the United States mean 
in terms of spiritual opportunity? Simply that God has 
placed before us a pathway to world-spiritual influence such 
as has never before been opened to a people. To fail to use 
it in a large way would be an unthinkable blunder. 

A New Sacrificial Temper 

A new sacrificial temper is abroad which is transform- 
ing the national life. Idealism has waxed strong in adver- 
sity. Multitudes who had hitherto lived selfish lives have 
learned the joy of helping to bear the burdens of others. 
We see it supremely in the thousands of men who have 
freely offered themselves to meet hardship, pain, and death 
for the nation's life. 

"Blow, bugles, blow. They brought us, for our dearth, 
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain. 

Honor has come back, as a King, to earth 
And paid his subjects with a royal wage ; 

And nobleness walks in our common ways again ; 
And we have come into our heritage."^ 



' President Wilson's War Message, April 2, 1917. 

2 Rupert Brooke, "The Dead." Published by John Lane Co. From Col- 
lected Poems of Rupert Brooke. 



A WORLD PROGRAM 185 

^^The call of national necessity, the splendid comrade- 
ship of service on behalf of all that makes life moral and 
spiritual and lifts it above a godless chaos that is ruled by 
brute force, the high romance of giving self away for the 
more-than-self which is the background of all idealism and 
religion, the breaking in upon smooth, easy living of a sud- 
den demand for sacrifice — these things have been a trumpet 
blast to the soul of the people during these past three 
years. Men who once appeared to be absorbed in trivial- 
ities have ridden off into the unknown with a great glory at 
heart that none can take away, and heroism which seemed 
to have vanished from the earth has looked at us again out 
of quiet, shining eyes, splendidly unconscious of anything 
but that it is fine and yet quite natural to venture all at the 
call of duty. We have seen the smaller interests of the state 
merged in the great flood of patriotism, and the partisan loy- 
alties of political life, while not abolished, yet certainly sub- 
ordinated to the higher demands of national service. Al- 
most everywhere we have heard a new spirit of self-devotion 
confessing the obligation to give one 's share, however small, 
to the whole effort of the nation. How different it has all 
been from the deadly inertia of the past P ' ^ 

That spirit is abroad in the land from coast to coast. 
Women have eagerly sought new forms of service and 
leaped forward to undertake responsibilities hitherto borne 
by tnen. Human society has never seemed more worth 
saving than it does now ; nor were the hearts of men ever 
more prepared for a great adventure. 

Surely, it is God's time to place before the newly dis- 
covered and released capacities in the manhood and wo- 
manhood of America for sacrifice, leadership, and devotion, 
the Christian crusade for the world's true freedom, as the 
completion of conflict in which they are now engaged. It is 
a time to show them that there is a battle line that extends 
not merely from the English Channel to the Mediterranean, 



^ F. B. MacNutt, The Church in the Furnace, p. 18. 



186 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

but which stretches out against the strongholds of night and 
evil around the world ; and a battle which never ceases and 
in whose warfare the highest and most heroic qualities of 
men are demanded. These new gains of the spirit in the 
men and women of America in these days will make the re- 
sponse to so great a cause sure and emphatic. 

The Voice of Missionary History 

That such a hope has solid foundations, the voice of 
history amply testifies. Strange as it may seem to the super- 
ficial glance, war time has always been the birthday of mis- 
sionary advance. There is a vital relation between the for- 
eign missionary enterprise and the widening of men's hor- 
izon through sacrifice and struggle. It was during the "War 
of 1812 that foreign missions in America began and Judson 
sailed for India. ^ ' The church did not wait for the success 
of our navy, but sent out its missionaries because moved in 
some measure by the same impulse that sent forth our ship 
— ^by a determination to assert human freedom for America 
and for all the world. ' ' ^ The record of our own Civil War 
days is eloquent. Seldom has a people passed through a 
more exhausting crisis, and it might well be supposed that 
foreign missionary societies would languish. But that was 
the very period when new ones were founded. All the wo- 
men's missionary organizations were founded either during 
or at the close of the war. The dark and critical years of 
1863 and 1864 witnessed a remarkable rally of the Christian 
people of North America to maintain their missionary enter- 
prises. The supporters of the American Board increased 
their givings by $61,000 in 1863 and by $122,000 in 1864.^ 
From 1852 to 1862 the average income of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church for home and foreign missions was under 
$260,000 ; in 1864 there came a further increase of $150,000, 
and in 1865 a still further increase of $83,000, bringing the 



W. H. P. Faunce, The New Horizon of Church and State, p. 36. 
J. H. Oldham, The World and the Gospel, p. 62. 



A WOELD PROGRAM 187 

total contribution in that year to more than $618,000. The 
same is true in larger measure of our own time. The Lon- 
don Missionary Society last year cleared off a large in- 
debtedness and carried forward its work without diminu- 
tion. The Missionary Society of the Wesleyan Church in 
England, in the third year of the war, received the largest 
income that it has ever received in its entire history. The 
Methodist Church in Canada received a larger income than 
it had ever had in any year of peace. 

These records prove that the support available for mis- 
sionary work is to be measured not by the material wealth 
of a people, but by the spirit which animates them. They 
well illustrate the truth strikingly expressed by John R. 
Mott: ^^The history of the world and all Christianity shows 
that periods of suffering have for some reason always been 
great creative moments with God. ' ' 

A Day of Wokld Hokizons 

The United States since 1914, and more completely 
since her entry into the war, has been forced to think in 
world terms. The horizon of the mind of the average citizen 
has been pushed back till it touches the ends of the earth. 
The map of the world has been really studied for the first 
time by a hundred million people. More than that, millions 
have become acutely conscious for the first time since they 
trudged away to school with a big geography under their 
arm, that there was such a thing as a map of the world. 
Geography has suddenly leaped out of the character of a 
text-book for the grammar grades into that of a gripping 
romance. To the average man a few years ago Bagdad was 
in the Arabian Nights — nowhere else. Jerusalem had its 
sole existence in the Bible. He could not tell whether 
Ukraine was a river or a breakfast food, and, more than 
that, he did not care. Multitudes of Americans have lived 
almost as remote from European problems as the Pequot 
Indians before the Pilgrims landed. But now the great con- 



188 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

flagration in Europe lias lighted up the four corners of the 
globe. What comes into our dinner table depends on what 
happens in Russia and the number of ships in South Amer- 
ican ports. The map of the world is replacing the map of 
the township and the township mind is bursting its bonds. 

Physical contacts have helped to widen the horizon. 
The gathering of millions of men in our own country into 
great cantonments has been an incalculable educational and 
social force in the removal of provincialism and mind-suft'o- 
cating prejudice. Letters home from Americans over the 
sea, in contact with new countries and new races, have 
pushed out the walls of a million homes until a large part of 
the world begins to be visible from the sitting room window. 
The recent beautiful words of a Canadian soldier throw a 
vivid light on the process of thought which is going on all 
over Xorth America : 

^^If where an Englishman is buried on a foreign soil is 
called ' a little bit of England, ' then we may call the Ypres 
salient a mighty bit of Canada. If anyone were to inquire 
what is the most important city of Canada, we might answer 
unhesitatingly, ^ The city of Ypres. ' The hosts of our young 
men who have fallen in battles round that city have hallowed 
the name for all Canadian hearts, and rendered the place 
ours in the deepest sense. Montreal, and Halifax, and Van- 
couver are among our lesser cities, but Ypres, where so 
many of our brave are buried, shall remain for us the city 
of our everlasting possessions.'' ^ 

This process has made more easy the task of spiritual- 
izing this gigantic lesson in geography. That is just what 
the missionary undertaking is — spiritual geography. When 
a man has learned to pronounce Ypres and Prezmysl (if any 
such exist) and Mesopotamia, there is a gTeater chance that 
he will be able to pronounce Chengiu and Benares and Sin- 
gapore and realize that they are not merely dots on the map 
in some forgotten text-book, but seething centers of life 



Arthur H. Chute, North American Review, March, 1918, p. 227. 



A WORLD PROGRAM 189 

which have a vital relation to him. The spots on the map 
must be put on our conscience, and there never was a more 
favorable atmosphere in which this transfer may be made 
than now. ^'When the thoughts of men are widened by the 
process of the suns, then is the time to widen the endeavor 
of the Christian Church. ' ' 



The Wokld at Ouk Dinner Table 

It is when we sit down at our dinner table, however, that 
the new horizon becomes most evident. America in her food 
conservation campaign has been keeping a world boarding 
house, and the process has high spiritual values. New 
boards have been put in the table to lengthen it out so that 
our Allies and the hungry peoples of the earth may sit down 
with us, and strange faces gather at every meal. The food- 
saving regulations are in effect a knock at the door at the 
beginning of every meal and the government saying to us, 
^^Move along a little closer at the table. Here are six 
French orphans who must dine with you to-day.'' And 
when in a thin, weak voice they ask, ^'Please pass the 
sugar,'' we pass it, even though we have only one spoonful, 
or none at all, for our coifee. At the next meal it is four 
hearty English soldiers whom we are feeding by our saving. 
They have been doing hard work and need meat and wheat, 
and we pass it to them, keeping the bran muffins for our- 
selves. Multitudes are rising up at these demands and 
throwing open the door to these hungry guests and crying, 
*^In the name of God, welcome!" The United States is 
making an experiment in organized sacrifice. The forces 
born out of a demand for food as a universal need are gen- 
erating new values in society which may be effective in turn- 
ing the scale to victory. They will be effective for a longer 
task than that too, for they are the fundamental virtues 
necessary to the extension of the kingdom of God. It is in- 
conceivable that after having had the world at our table for 
years, reminded at every meal of the world fellowship of 



190 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

need, France's need and Belgium's, Poland's and Ar- 
menia's, as well as our own, we can ever again sit down 
in the little dining room as it was before, and shut the world 
from our thought. America has already appeared in a new 
role among the nations as the Wheat Bringer, and the expe- 
rience is preparing her in a real way for the larger task to 
which she must come — that of spreading the Bread of Life 
before the world and bidding the lame, the halt, the blind of 
the East and West to sit down at the great democratic feast 
of God. 

Accomplishing the Task 

THE discovery OE GOD 

The discovery of a world — a world so needy as ours — 
is a terrible thing unless there goes with it something else, 
the discovery of God. That is the center of the Centenary 
undertaking — a new discovery of God. It is not money pri- 
marily. Money will not be given without the Spirit of God 
to prompt it ; nor can it be used fruitfully without the Spirit 
of God to direct. The neiv world-consciousness must be 
matched by a new God-consciousness. It is a vast foreign 
missionary program and is paralleled by one equally great 
for home missions. In the face of such a task, without God 
we can do nothing. That is the chief glory of the task. The 
tragedy of a little task is that frequently a man or a group of 
men can accomplish it and there it ends. The glory of a big 
task is that men are utterly unable to accomplish it and are 
thrown back on God in utter dependence. That brings them 
into contact with the only power sufficient for getting God 's 
work done in the world — the fullness of God himself. It is 
futile for us to find again the world-horizon of Christ if we 
do not find also the vantage point from which he scanned it, 
that of an empowering fellowship with God. The whole 
Centenary task of which every other aspect is an expression 
is to increase the spiritual energy of the church by the full- 
ness of spiritual life. It was that release of power which 
was always in Paul's mind when he thought of the church 



A WORLD PROGRAM 191 

— *^Tlie church which is his body, the fullness of Him that 
fillethallinall/' 

THE EESPONSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 

With the far horizon of Christ must go the immediate 
focus of his call on the individual. It is not ^^the church'' 
which can do this task; it is no mythical ''they" who can do 
it. It is we who must do it. It is I who must do it. Christ 
lifted up his eyes afar and beheld the fields white unto har- 
vest; but he also always looked squarely into the eyes of the 
individual he spoke to, and flung his great imperatives. 
Come, Be, Do, and Go, into the heart of the man before him. 
The evangelization of the whole world demands tine whole 
church. 

This truth of the dependence of victory upon every 
man has been greatly sharpened by the war. If the war has 
resulted in the discovery of the world as one, it has made 
another discovery equally great at the other end of the scale 
— the discovery of the common man. It is not too much to 
say that among the many things which distinguish this war 
from all others, one is the emergence of the common man. 
The strongest weapon in the hands of either side is the 
capacity to starve. Victory depends on the capacity and 
willingness of the whole people to suffer and sacrifice. It is 
fought by the individual in every walk of life rather than 
generals and leaders and governments. ' ' The war is being 
fought to-day by all the nations in the most solid formation 
imaginable — men, women, and children all roped together 
after the fashion of the Ancient Cimbri when going into 
battle.''^ 

A Militant Faith 

Christ's warfare in the world is a people's warfare. If 
the Centenary Program is to mean a successful epoch in that 
victory, it will be only through the service and sacrifice of 
every disciple. 

^ Simeon Strunsky, Yale Review, October, 1917. 



192 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

It means that the militant conceptions of our faith which 
run all through the New Testament shall achieve a new 
dominion over our lives. "The army/' says the first of the 
regulations and orders for the British army, "is composed 
of those who have undertaken a definite liability for serv- 
ices.'' So is the church. That liability must be recognized 
by more than the comparatively few. ^ ^ Christ also loved the 
church, and gave himself for it ; . . . that he might pre- 
sent it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or 
wrinkle, or any such thing." Christ's church must not be 
a church in which men enlist for a lifelong warfare, and then 
pass into a permanent reserve which is never called up for 
active service. Its bases must not be thronged with those 
who wear its uniform but refuse to go up into the line. The 
call of the hour is for the resources of the whole church, 
multiplied by a new energizing of God, to be lined up to the 
whole task of the Kingdom. 

A NEW EEALITY IN" EELIGION 

A new reality in our religion must be our primary pre- 
paration to meet the day. We cannot be 

"Light half -believers in our casual creeds 
Who never deeply felt or clearly willed," 

and be what our own time demands of us as followers of 
Christ. The only method of growth that the kingdom of 
Christ has ever known has been by the overflow of an 
abounding life. And as it was in the beginning it is now 
and ever shall be. To nourish and sustain that new reality 
of faith, the Centenary Movement calls for a new practice 
of prayer. To express that reality it calls for a new practice 
of stewardship. 

PRAYER 

The call is for a world-fellowship of intercession 
throughout the church. It will mean for many entirely new 
adventures in prayer, and prayer is an adventure — the most 



A WORLD PROGRAM 193 

rewarding and the most enabling adventure in life. Prayer 
is not saying religious words with our eyes shut and a ter- 
minal ^^Amen" attached. It is a venturing forth of the 
soul like the voyage of Columbus across a great unchartered 
deep. And as the evidence that it really finds the Father 
that it seeks, it brings back the marvelous treasure of a 
changed life and a reenf orced might for service. "We read in 
the Gospels that when Jesus looked out over the whitened 
fields ready for harvest, the first thing he said was, 
^'Pray." His order must be ours. ^'It is in agonizing in- 
tercession that the real conflict in our time is to be won. 
Rivers of vitality have their rise in souls that are on their 
knees. The deep and mighty prayers of the church are the 
birth pangs of the race. ' ' ^ 

STEWARDSHIP 

Stewardship is organized devotion. It must be a stew- 
ardship of life — ^holding our personality and all its powers 
as a trust. For many it will mean a dedication of life to spe- 
cific service. The church needs eighteen hundred new men 
every year to keep her pulpits adequately manned. The 
Board of Foreign Missions has declared the need of five 
hundred new missionaries every year to carry out the Cen- 
tenary Program ; and the Home Board requires no less. It 
is a call for the strong, daring leaders. ' ' Send forth the best 
ye breed'' is the world's asking. 

It must be a stewardship of money — a definitely 
planned and scanned allotment of a sacrificial proportion 
of money regularly given to God. We must bear in our 
ledger, in our cash book, ' ' the marks of the Lord Jesus. ' ' 

The Available Resources 

The Methodist Episcopal Church is easily able to make 
the offering required to meet the financial asking of the total 
world Program of Foreign and Home Missions. The budget 

^ J. H. Jowett, The Church in Time of War, p. 122. 



194 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

of forty million dollars in five years for foreign missions 
would require an average weekly offering of only four and 
one half cents per member! The present combined offering 
of churches and Sunday schools is an average of less than 
half a cent a week per member ! The total of eighty millions 
of dollars for both Home and Foreign Mission program can 
be raised by an average gift of nine cents per member each 
week. Surely this is not a staggering amount! The chief 
difficulty to be overcome is that at present the total offering 
for all benevolences comes from a small per cent of the mem- 
bership. 

^'In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth.'' God is still creating. The loom of Providence is 
moving swiftly. It took one hundred years of missionary 
effort to win the first million converts to Protestant Chris- 
tianity. It took twelve to win the second. It took six to win 
the third. In the melting and reshaping world to-day the 
movement of the Kingdom is accelerated. Never was the 
creative hand of God more clearly visible than in this hour. 
What more glorious destiny could there be for anyone than 
to become in deed and truth a fellow worker, a fellow creator 
of the new world he is shaping? 

"Only have vision and bold enterprise, 
No task too great for men of unsealed eyes. 
The future stands with outstretched hands ; 
Press on and claim its high supremacies." 



QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 
CHAPTER I 

1. How would you answer the contention that the war 
has shown the failure of Christianity? 

2. Do you believe that war can be destroyed by in- 
crease of education, science, commerce, or law! Give rea- 
sons for your answer. 

3. Do you think that Christian principles, if they were 
allowed free action, could prevent war! What principles? 

4. In what ways do Christian missions make for 
peace ? Can you give any examples f 

5. In what ways has the war shown the. unity and in- 
terdependence of the world I 

6. What effects of the war in changing conditions of 
life here in the United States have come under your obser- 
vation? 

7. How would you define ' ^ democracy ' ' ? Why do you 
consider it worth fighting for? 

8. What teachings of Jesus have been effective in pro- 
moting democracy ? Why have they been so ? 

9. What is the difference between autocracy and de- 
mocracy? Which is the nearer to Christian principles? 
Why? 

10. What different institutions or forces have made 
democracy and freedom permanent in the United States ? 

11. What are the imperfections of democracy in the 
United States ? How may they be corrected ? 

12. What is the effect of a democracy in a country 
where people are not ready for it? 

13. What does a nation need in order to be fitted for 
democracy? 

14. How does Christianity supply those needs? 

15. What is meant by a ^ Aplastic'' condition in the life 

195 



196 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

of a nation? Wliat evidences are there in different coun- 
tries of such conditions now? 

16. Why is there a better opportunity for the extension 
of Christianity now than a generation from now? 

17. In what way would you show that missions are a 
completion of the nation's task in the war? 



CHAPTER n 

Latin Ameeica 

1. What difference in ideals and purposes was there 
between the early settlers of North and South America? 
What effect did these differences have on the development 
of the two continents ? 

2. What reasons are there for expecting an immense 
immigration to South America in this century? 

3. What are the reasons for the comparative neglect 
of South America by the United States. 

4. What are the causes of the present new interest ? In 
what ways has that interest been expressed? 

5. What has been the effect of the large illiteracy on 
the democracy of South America ? 

6. What would you say to the contention that South 
America is a Roman Catholic continent and Protestants 
ought to keep out of it ? 

7. What are some of the characteristics of Roman 
Catholicism in South America? How does it differ from 
the Catholic Church as we know it in the United States ? 

8. What are the reasons for the prevalence of agnosti- 
cism in South America ? 

9. Why does the United States have a peculiar respon- 
sibility for the welfare of South America? 

10. How can it best meet that responsibility? 

11. What conditions seem to you to promise most suc- 
cess to Christian missions in South America now? 

12. Mexico is one of the richest lands in the world, 



QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 197 

probably the very richest in the world in proportion to its 
population. Why are the majority of the people so poor? 

13. What do you consider the good results of the Mex- 
ican revolution? 

14. Why is it a matter of intense importance to the 
United States what Mexico becomes I 

15. How does Mexico stand in reference to the neces- 
sary conditions of a safe democracy discussed in Chapter I? 

16. What are the hopeful conditions for the develop- 
ment of a strong Protestant Christianity in Mexico 1 

17. How would the Centenary Program of Methodism 
for Latin America affect the prospects of democracy there ? 



CHAPTER ni 

China 

1. How would you compare the probability of winning 
China to Christianity to the probability of the early church's 
winning the Roman empire ? Which do you think the harder 
task! Why do you think so? 

2. Compare the Renaissance, or Revival of Learning, 
in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages with the awaken- 
ing in China. 

3. What were the causes of the revolution by which 
China became a republic? What part had Christian mis- 
sions in it? 

4. Why does the fact that China is a republic increase 
the obligation at this time to strengthen the Christian 
Church there? 

5. In what necessities of a strong and safe democracy 
is China weak or lacking entirely? 

6. How does the Centenary Program of Methodism 
'aim to strengthen these deficiences ? 

7. Why is the opportunity for the Christianization of 
China one that will not wait for a long period of years? 
What elements in the present opportunity are transient? 

8. What advantages of popularity do missionaries en- 



198 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

joy to-day in China? What are the reasons for it? Will it 
always be so ? 

9. ^^y is the new feeling of patriotism an advantage 
to Christianity? How may it possibly become an obstacle? 

10. What will be the future character of China if it 
does not become a Christian nation? What effect would 
such a result have on the peace and moral progress of the 
world? 

11. What are some of the evil effects which contact 
with Western civilization has had on China ? 

12. Which do you regard as the harder task — the abo- 
lition of opium in China or the prohibition of liquor in the 
United States? 

13. ^Hiat reasons are there favorable to the influence 
of the United States in educational and spiritual influence 
in China? 

14. What features of China's history make educa- 
tion of supreme importance ? 

15. What main lines of service are planned in the Cen- 
tenary Program for China? Which one would you prefer 
to engage in ? 

16. What are the particular possibilities of influence in 
the ^ve university centers involved in the Centenary Pro- 
gram? 

17. If China's faith in her old religions is destroyed 
and Christianity is not put in their place, will she be as 
well off as before ? 

18. What are the reasons why many people believe 
China may be made a Christian nation within a century ? 



CHAPTER IV 

India 

1. Which is more significant for the future of Chris- 
tianity in the Orient — the mass movement in India or the 
turning to Christ of the educated classes in China! Why? 



QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 199 

2. Which do you think is the greatest sorrow, that of 
a widow in America or in India? Why? 

3. In which foreign country do you think the worst 
degradation of womanhood prevails ? Why do you think so ! 

4. What will be the result if the masses who are com- 
ing into the Christian Church in India through the mass 
movement are not given Christian training and education 1 

5. What will be the effects if those now waiting for 
baptism are permanently refused through lack of mission- 
aries and teachers? 

6. Is India ready for independent self-government 
now? How can Christian missions prepare the way for 
self-government ? 

7. What would be some of the changes in the life of an 
American city if the caste system prevailed here ? 

8. How does the Christian gospel promote democracy? 

9. What is the effect of the doctrine of the brotherhood 
of man on the caste system? 

10. Why would complete democratic government be 
unsafe in India to-day? 

11. How does the caste system of India make mass 
movements possible? 

12. What are some of the reasons for the mass move- 
ment in India ? 



CHAPTER V 

Africa 

1. What relation has Africa to the future peace of the 
world? 

2. Why is it harder to win the native Africans from 
Mohammedanism to Christianity than to win them directly 
from paganism ? 

3. What have been the good results of European rule 
in Africa ? What have been the evil results ? 

4. What are some reasons for the successful advance 
of Mohammedanism among the native Africans ? 



200 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

5. "What are the evil results of the Mohammedan faith? 

6. What answer would you make to the common state- 
ment that Mohammedanism is the religion best suited to the 
African native ? 

7. If you were to go as a missionary to some one of the 
great fields would you choose Africa f Give reasons for your 
answer. 

8. How does the collapse of the political power of 
Islam favorably atfect the missionary opportunity in 
Africa? 

9. What would you consider to be a truly Christian 
attitude in the government of African colonies by European 
countries ? 

10. What have been some of the reasons which have 
made the evangelization of Africa a slower process than in 
some other continents ? 



CHAPTER VI 

Japak", the Philippines, and Malaysia 

1. What are the particular reasons why the future of 
Christianity in the Orient depends so much on its success in 
Japan? 

2. How does the Pacific Ocean correspond to the Medi- 
terranean Sea in the life of the world in the beginning of the 
Christian era? 

3. In what ways do you think the friendship between 
Japan and the United States can be strengthened? 

4. Wliat effect do you think the war is having on our 
friendship with Japan? 

5. What are the moral dangers to which Japan is ex- 
posed and how can Christianity meet them? 

6. Show on the map the strategic location of Korea 
with reference to the through routes of travel from Europe 
to Asia. 



QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 201 

7. What are some of the benefits which American occu- 
pation of the Philippines has brought to the people? 

8. Do you think it wise to grant immediate independ- 
ence to the Filipinos! Why do you think as you do? 

9. What would be the effect on the future prospects of 
Christianity in Asia of a failure to win the Filipinos I 

10. How has the American government in the Philip- 
pines affected the democratic movement in Asia ? 

11. What reasons are there for the emigration of 
Chinese to Malaysia? 

12. What are the advantages for missionary influence 
in a country being newly settled ! 

13. Why is Singapore so influential a point with refer- 
ence to the rest of Asia? 

14. What effect would the extension of Christianity 
among the Chinese of Malaysia have on the Christian enter- 
prise in China itself? 



CHAPTER VII 

EUEOPE 

1. What are some of the handicaps which a state-con- 
trolled church has in the proclamation of a full and free 
gospel ? 

2. What are the greatest obstacles to a permanent 
peace in Europe ? How would the extension of a vital 
Christianity affect these obstacles ? 

3. What are some of the reasons for the failure of the 
Russian Revolution to establish a strong, safe government? 

4. In what ways do you think the spiritual task of re- 
conciliation after the war may be performed? What fits the 
Methodism of Europe for sharing in that work? 

5. What is the necessity of having a vital spiritual 
church in Germany after the war? 

6. What characteristics of the Russian people seem to 
promise hope for a future great nation? 



202 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 

7. What have been the effects on the Russian people 
of the long tyranny of the Tsars I 

8. What has been the character of the Russian Ortho- 
dox Church! 

- 9. What are the chief religious needs of Russia, to 
strengthen it for success in democratic government? 

10. What changes are being brought about by the 
revolution in the Russian Church? 

11. How can Protestant missions influence this reli- 
gious situation! 

12. What reciprocal effect would a large extension of 
Protestant Christianity in Italy have on the United States ? 

13. What effect would it have on the democracy of 
Italy? 



CHAPTER VIII 

1. What are some of the results of the first century of 
Methodist missions? How has this effort in foreign lands 
affected the growth and life of the church at home ? 

2. Why was the Methodist Revival in England, under 
the leadership of John Wesley and Whitefield and others, an 
influence in bettering social conditions and securing greater 
political freedom? 

3. What is meant by ^'a moral equivalent for war''? 
In what ways can the missionary enterprise of Christianity 
appeal to the same virtues which are developed by war? 
Why has it not done so more in the past? 

4. What do you think are the principal obstacles in the 
way of making possible an advanced missionary program 
at the present time? 

5. Wliat are the characteristics of this time which are 
favorable to an increased interest in aggressive foreign 
missions? 

6. What would you say to a man who argues, ^^We 
ought not to think of or plan for anything except the war"? 

7. What would you say to a man who says, ^'I give all 



QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 203 

my contributions to the Red Cross ; I haven't a cent for mis- 
sions''? 

8. What evidences can you give out of personal expe- 
rience of the increase of men's knowledge and interest in 
the rest of the world due to the war? How much geog- 
raphy have you learned from the war I 

9. How do you explain the fact that war times have 
always been times of increased missionary activity and giv- 
ing? 

10. Why is the United States to-day in a favorable 
position for world spiritual influence? Would it have had 
such a position if it had stayed out of the war ? 

11. What is the relation of prayer to the world pro- 
gram of Christianity? 

12. What is the meaning of ^ ^ stewardship ' ' ? 

13. Wliat do you think constitutes a ^ ^ call ' ' for Chris- 
tian service abroad or at home? 

14. How can the sympathies and generosity which the 
war has aroused be conserved after the war is over? 

15. What appear to you the strongest reasons for a 
thorough mobilization of Methodism for her world cam- 
paign? 



204 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY 



SUGGESTIONS FOE COLLATERAL READING 

The Call of a World Task. By F. Lovell Murray. 

The Soul of Democracy. By Edward Howard Griggs. 

The Churches of Christ in War Time. Edited by C. S. Macfarland. 

South American Neighbors. By Homer C. Stuntz. 

The Renaissance of Latin America. By Harlan P. Beach. 

The Changing Chinese. By Edward A. Ross. 

China : An Interpretation. By James W. Bashf ord. 

The New Era in Asia.- By Sherwood Eddy. 

The Lure of Africa. Cornelius H. Patton. 

India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. W. F. Oldham. 

Since this course deals with the developments and movements of 
the hour, the best reference material will be found in monthly periodi- 
cals, particularly the World Outlook and the Missionary Review of the 
World and the weekly Christian Advocates. 

The above books may be obtained from the publishers of this 
volume. 



THE MISSIONARY CENTENARY 

Booklets and Folders of Helpful Information 

The Place of Prayer in God's Plan of World Conquest. By James M. 

Campbell. 5 cents. 
Preparing for Tomorrow. Free. 

The Next Hundred Years. By W. E. Doughty. Free. 
The Centenary World Program: What It Is and What It Propoaea. 

Free. 
Foreign Missions and World Democracy. 10 cents. 
Why Launch a World Program in War Times. By John R. Mott. Free. 

All the above will be sent on receipt of 15 cents. 

Address, Joint Centenary Committee, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, 
N. Y. 



TO UNDERSTAND WHAT 
WORLD DEMOCRACY MEANS 

You must have a 

WORLD OUTLOOK 

To get it, send 20 cents for a single copy or 

$ 1 .50 for a year's subscription to the publishers, 

150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 



if 



1 



you have not yet seen this magazine which gives you in 
the most attractive form possible, lively, terse accounts 
of the fascinating changes going on in the Orient, Africa, 
South America, the United States, it will pay you to send 
for a sample copy at once. 



If 



1 

you have seen it and realized how it helps you through 
its unexcelled pictorial display and authoritative articles 
to understand the rest of the world in a human intimate 
fashion, you will know that you cannot afford to be 
without it during these coming years. 

WORLD OUTLOOK will furnish you the 
most helpful collateral reading you can do in 
connection with the text book on the "Christian 
Crusade for World Democracy." It will give 
you just the background and colorful incident to 
make the text doubly alive. 

SUBSCRIBE NOW 



